LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
RIVERSIDE 


THE  WORLD'S   HIGHWAY 
NORMAN    ANGELL 


THE   WORLD'S 
HIGHWAY 


SOME  NOTES  ON   AMERICA'S    RELATION   TO   SEA 

POWER  AND  NON-MILITARY  SANCTIONS 

FOR    THE    LAW    OF    NATIONS 


BY 

NORMAN  ANGELL 

•  •» 

AUTHOR  OF     THE  GREAT  ILLUSION 

"ARMS  AND  INDUSTRY,"  "AMERICA  AND 

THE  WORLD  STATE,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1915 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


PREFACE 

THESE  notes  have  certainly  no  pretension  of 
treating  exhaustively  the  questions  with 
which  they  deal ;  still  less  of  being  a  lawyer's  dis- 
cussion of  details  of  international  law:  prize, 
blockade,  contraband,  search.  However  impor- 
tant those  things  may  be,  this  country's  final 
policy  will  be,  or  should  be,  settled  by  considera- 
tions that  go  rather  beyond  them. 

What  I  have  attempted,  therefore,  in  the  selec- 
tion and  arrangement  of  these  notes,  is  to  bring 
into  relief  the  more  important  aspects  of  the  gen- 
eral principles  that  underlie  international  polity 
in  so  far  as  it  affects  Americans.  The  book  in 
fact  may  be  regarded  as  an  attempt  to  furnish 
an  introduction  to  the  study  of  American  foreign 
policy ;  a  contribution  to  national  preparedness  in 
that  respect. 

A  country  can  as  little  dispense  with  pre- 
paredness in  policy  as  in  arms.  The  idea  that 
the  former  can  be  neglected  if  only  the  latter  are 
efficient,  that  we  can  attain  security  by  military 
force  alone,  is  one  of  those  errors  against  which 
Bismarck  warned  his  countrymen — vainly — 
thirty  years  ago.  He  then  pointed  out  that  mili- 


vi  PREFACE 

tary  efficiency,  coupled  with  an  absence  of  definite 
policy  means  finally  the  triumph  of  the  wrong 
policy;  and  consequent  disaster. 

America  is  not  exempt  from  this  rule.  The 
idea  that  American  military  force  can  have  no 
relation  to  anything  but  the  repulsion  of  preda- 
tory raids  upon  American  territory  is  only  made 
possible  by  ignoring  certain  very  patent  facts 
in  modern  politics.  Every  great  nation  de- 
fends, and  is  compelled  to  defend  with  its  armed 
forces,  not  merely  its  territory,  but  a  policy.  And 
this  is  particularly  true  of  America  where  the 
policies  that  she  seems  to  be  developing  are  likely 
to  come  into  contact  with  other,  if  not  rival 
policies,  throughout  the  world. 

The  elasticity  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  pos- 
sible intervention  in  Mexico,  some  sort  of  suze- 
rainty over  Central  America,  Pan-Americanism, 
the  future  status  of  the  Panama  Canal,  of  the 
Philippines,  the  attitude  of  Japan  thereto,  Japan- 
ese immigration,  the  integrity  of  China,  the  Open 
Door  in  Asia,  America's  relation  to  the  Asiatic 
races  generally  and  to  the  three  great  Asiatic 
powers,  including  the  greatest,  Britain ;  the  ques- 
tion of  the  future  freedom  of  the  seas,  and  the 
protection  of  American  lives  and  trading  rights 
as  against  naval  belligerency — these  are  only  a 
few  of  the  questions  concerning  which  she  will 
have  to  frame  a  policy  to  be  defended  in  the  last 


PREFACE  vii 

resort  by  her  military  power.  If  it  is  ill  framed, 
swayed  first  in  one  direction,  then  in  another, 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  passing  incident 
of  foreign  intercourse,  these  things  will  become 
sources  of  recurring  conflict  which  the  very  fact 
of  possessing  large  forces  makes  dangerous.  That 
is  not  an  argument  against  military  preparedness ; 
it  is  an  argument  for  knowing  just  what  the  pre- 
paredness is  for,  to  what  general  policy  the  coun- 
try stands  committed;  who  its  allies  are  to  be, 
what  role  it  is  to  play  in  the  community  of  nations. 
To  leave  these  things  to  chance,  to  the  influence 
of  passing  catch  words,  remnants  of  ill  defined 
prejudices,  is  to  make  military  power  an  instru- 
ment for  the  creation  of  muddle  and  disaster; 
and  to  expose  the  country  to  the  risk  of  duplicat- 
ing the  bad  instead  of  the  good  side  of  European 
experience. 

If  that  experience  is  to  warn  us,  it  is  obvious 
that  we  must  subject  certain  accepted  doc- 
trines of  European  statecraft  to  pretty  ruth- 
less interrogation.  Certainly  the  fruits  which 
Europeans  are  now  gathering,  are  not  the  result 
of  mere  errors  of  detail  in  policy:  consequences 
so  vast  can  only  arise  from  defects  somewhere 
in  the  foundations. 

I  have  tried,  therefore,  to  go  to  the  founda- 
tions and  provoke  examination  of  them.  In  cer- 
tain cases  these  notes  are  notes  mainly  of  inter- 


viii  PREFACE 

rogation — as  in  the  discussion  of  the  doctrine  of 
neutrality,  where  I  suggest  that  possibly  a  solu- 
tion of  our  difficulty  may  be  found  in  a  fulfilment 
of  the  anticipation  of  Grotius  on  that  subject.  It 
is  neither  unscientific  nor  futile  to  be  prepared 
to  push  investigation  into  channels  that  may  pos- 
sibly prove  barren:  indeed  that  is  at  times  an 
essential  part  of  the  scientific  method.  It  is  in 
this  spirit  also  that  I  have  enquired  how  far  in 
certain  circumstances  the  policy  of  resistance  by 
other  than  military  means  might  not  prove  a 
remedy  for  evils  that  seem  otherwise  irremediable. 
With  grave  doubts  in  my  own  mind  as  to  the 
morality  of  non-resistance  as  a  general  principle 
in  politics,  however  much  may  be  said  for  it  in 
certain  international  cases  on  the  ground  of  prac- 
tical expediency,  it  is  at  least  possible  that  con- 
certed social  and  economic  pressure  may  prove 
in  many  cases  superior  to  military  means,  both 
on  grounds  of  morality  and  effectiveness.  It  is 
a  proof  of  how  little  original  thinking  and  re- 
search is  brought  to  the  field  of  international 
politics  that  the  possibilities  of  this  form  of 
pressure  as  a  means  of  international  coercion 
have  been  so  little  investigated.  I  have  attempted 
to  give  a  hint  of  some  of  those  possibilities. 

Possibly  the  method  of  ruthless  interroga- 
tion may  give  to  some  of  these  pages  an  air  of 
pro-Germanism.  Yet  I  happen  to  have  written 


PREFACE  ix 

against  Prussianism  long  before  it  was  fash- 
ionable so  to  do;  when,  for  instance,  Mr. 
Joseph  Chamberlain  was  advocating  an  Anglo- 
German  alliance.  At  that  time,1  writing  from 
Paris,  I  found,  to  my  cost,  that  it  was  not  per- 
mitted to  an  author  or  journalist  to  say  anything 
good  of  France — which  I  tried  hard  to  say — or 
anything  bad  of  Germany.  Times  change. 

I  still  preserve  my  anti-Prussianism ;  which  this 
war  has  justified.  I  think  that  Germans  must 
carry  the  main  burden  of  blame  for  an  extent 
not  merely  of  suffering — which  sometimes  may 
dignify  and  ennoble  men,  and  which  is  not  the 
highest  cost  of  war — but  for  implanting  seeds 
of  evil  and  wickedness  of  which  even  distant 
generations  will  gather  the  fruit. 

But  one  wants  to  understand  this  thing; 
because  we  can't  deal  with  it  unless  we  do. 
And  while  believing  the  Germans  to  be  en- 
tirely wrong  in  this  matter  I  realise  that  they 
may  honestly  believe  themselves  to  be  entirely 
right.  And  this  simple  distinction — surely  not 
very  intricate  or  abstruse — very  many,  perhaps 
most,  who  deal  with  this  subject  refuse  to  make. 
Certain  critics  have  insisted  upon  accusing  me 
of  pro-Germanism  because  I  recognise  the  quite 
evident  truth  that  even  wicked  people  may  be  mis- 
Cowards  the  close  of  the  Dreyfus  case  and  beginning  of  the 
Boer  War. 


x  PREFACE 

taken ;  and  that  the  wrongness  of  a  conviction  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  obstinacy  or 
sincerity  with  which  it  may  be  held.  It  is  not 
sufficient,  apparently,  to  believe  that  the  Germans 
are  wrong;  one  must  also  believe  that  they  know 
themselves  to  be  wrong.  Which  is  to  underesti- 
mate altogether  man's  capacity  for  self-deception 
and  ignore  some  of  the  simplest  facts  concerning 
the  working  of  human  nature. 

I  can  hardly  hope,  however,  that  mere  prefa- 
tory caution  of  this  kind  will  suffice  to  save  a 
book  from  misunderstanding  or  misrepresenta- 
tion. In  an  earlier  work,2  anticipating  the  con- 
fusions to  which  that  kind  of  literature  seems 
subject  in  the  minds  of  some  critics,  I  wrote  in  the 
preface  these  words :  "The  argument  of  this  book 
is  not  that  war  is  impossible,  but  that  it  is  futile." 
The  first  paragraph  of  the  first  chapter  was  a 
forecast  of  the  inevitable  collision  between  Eng- 
land and  Germany  unless  there  were  a  change  in 
European  policy;  in  the  last  paragraph  of  the 
book  the  warning  as  to  recurring  disasters  in 
Europe,  unless  the  problem  of  policy  were  tackled, 
was  reiterated;  three  whole  chapters  were  de- 
voted to  showing  why  the  uselessness  of  war 
would  never  of  itself  prevent  war.  And  the 
result  of  it  all  is  that  to-day  most  critical  refer- 
ences to  the  book  imply  its  thesis  to  be  the  "im- 

3The  Great  Illusion, 


PREFACE  xi 

possibility  of  war";  and  that  the  present  war  dis- 
proves its  arguments. 

This,  parenthetically,  not  by  way  of  personal 
vindication.  It  rightly  matters  very  little  to  the 
serious  reader  whether  this  or  that  author  should 
have  been  misrepresented.  It  matters  a  very 
great  deal,  if  we  are  to  do  better  than  in  the  past 
in  the  management  of  our  society,  whether  dis- 
tortion and  misrepresentation  are  to  continue  to 
fortify  prejudices  which  already  stand  so  strongly 
in  the  way  of  any  general  realisation  of  certain 
truths  essential  to  that  better  management. 

The  nature  of  American  influence  on  world 
politics — which  in  any  case,  good  or  bad,  will 
be  enormous — will  be  determined  mainly  by  feel- 
ing and  opinion  on  general  principles  and  broad 
issues.  Democratic  judgment  obviously  cannot 
be  based  on  induction  from  a  mass  of  detail.  It 
is  to  those  broader  issues  that  the  discussion  here 
for  the  most  part  is  directed. 

The  notes  are  in  considerable  part  a  reproduc- 
tion of  comment  that  has  appeared  in  Europe  and 
America;  and  in  some  cases  I  could  wish  that 
there  had  been  time  to  recast  the  form  for  the 
purposes  of  this  book.  But  events  in  the  inter- 
national field  are  moving  rapidly,  and  it  is  now, 
within  the  next  few  months  perhaps,  that  Amer- 
ican opinion  will  crystallise  on  very  essential 
points  of  policy.  It  may  be  worth  while  therefore, 


Xll 


PREFACE 


if  the  thing  has  value  at  all,  to  sacrifice  something 
in  form  to  timeliness.  If  ever  there  is  an  excuse 
for  haste  in  workmanship  I  hope  it  may  be  ex- 
tended to  me  on  that  ground. 

I  am  indebted  to  the  editors  of  "The  North 
American  Review,"  "The  Saturday  Evening 
Post,"  and  "The  New  Republic"  for  permission 
to  reprint  matter  which  has  appeared  in  their 
publications ;  and  to  my  excellent  friend,  Mr.  C.  E. 
Fayle  (author  of  "The  Great  Settlement"),  for 
helping  me  with  the  data  used  in  chapter  IV. 
Indeed  that  chapter,  mainly  a  summary  of  the 
conclusions  of  modern  strategists  as  to  the 
mechanism  of  command  of  the  sea,  rather  than 
conclusions  of  my  own,  is  largely  his  work. 

NORMAN  ANGELL. 

New  York,  September,  1915. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  AMERICA,  THE  SEA  AND  THE  SOCIETY 

OF  NATIONS  3 

Why  the  world  does  not  fear  British  "marinism" 
and  does  fear  German  militarism.  "Marinism" 
does  not  encroach  on  social  and  political  freedom 
and  militarism  does.  The  difference  between  the 
character  of  British  and  German  political  ex- 
pansion. Is  it  in  America's  best  interest  to  attempt 
in  defense  of  neutral  trading  right  to  limit  British 
Sea  Power?  Relative  unimportance  of  the  trade 
interests  out  of  which  the  dispute  has  arisen.  The 
alternative  courses  of  action  before  the  United 
States.  The  course  here  suggested  and  an  indica- 
tion of  the  grounds  upon  which  it  will  be  defended 
in  this  book. 

II.  AMERICAN  MILITARY  ACTION  IN  EU- 

ROPE:  WHAT  WOULD  RESULT? 31 

America  could  not  achieve  the  objects  for  which 
she  is  contending  in  her  disputes  with  Germany  and 
Britain  merely  by  ensuring  the  military  victory  of 
the  Allies  since  "the  goods  could  not  be  delivered" 
at  the  Peace.  The  mere  destruction  of  Austro- 
German  military  power  could  neither  be  permanent 
nor  give  any  assurance  that  future  re-groupings  of 
European  alliances  would  not  take  place,  creating 
a  situation  as  unsatisfactory  in  the  future  as  in  the 
past.  The  impermanence  of  the  destruction  of  a 
nation's  military  power  and  the  mutability  of  mili- 
tary alliances  belong  to  the  few  unquestionable 
lessons  of  history. 

III.    AN    ANGLO-SAXON    OR    A    PRUSSIAN 

WORLD? 57 

What  are  Anglo-Saxon  and  Prussian  ideals?     In     . 
setting  out  to  destroy  the  one  and  protect  the 
other  we  must  be  able  to  recognize  which  is  which. 
Is  Europe  Prussianising  itself  as  part  of  the  pro- 


xiv  CONTENTS 

cess  of  increasing  its  military  efficiency?  If  mili- 
tary conflict  is  to  continue  military  efficiency 
will  determine  its  issue,  and  that  implies  the  req- 
uisite form  of  national  organisation  and  code  of 
morals.  The  highest  price  of  war  is  the  Prus- 
sianisation  of  the  people  who  wage  it,  however 
good  their  cause  may  be.  The  process  is  not  the 
result  of  race,  but  of  doctrine  acting  upon  human 
qualities  which  are  latent  in  all  of  us.  Thus 
though  the  flag  may  be  Anglo-Saxon  the  society 
of  the  future  will  be  Prussianised  if  we  have  to 
beat  the  Prussian  at  his  own  game.  Is  there  any 
other  way  of  beating  him? 

IV.    THE  MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER....     119 

If  "marinism"  has  not  the  special  political  and 
social  dangers  connected  with  militarism  (as  in  the 
first  chapter  we  saw  that  it  has  not),  may  not  the 
Anglo-Saxons  find  in  sea  power  a  means  of  extending 
their  influence  without  paying  the  moral  price  in- 
volved in  Prussianism?  To  answer  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  realize  how  sea  power  works.  This  chapter 
gives  a  summary  of  the  general  conclusions  of 
authoritative  modern  strategists  on  the  operation 
of  sea  power  and  the  relation  it  must  bear  to 
military  power. 

V.     SOME  LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER....   153 

Is  the  assumption  that  by  enlarging  the  belligerent 
rights  of  sea  power  we  shall  ensure  the  predomi- 
nance of  the  non-military,  Anglo-Saxon,  Liberal 
type  of  society  as  against  the  continental  military- 
authoritative  form,  a  valid  assumption?  The  evi- 
dence is  all  against  it.  Sea  power  being  increasingly 
dependent  upon  military  allies  for  the  exercise  of 
world  influence  is  unable  to  pick  and  choose  as  to 
the  character  of  the  nation  it  supports,  as  the  box- 
ing of  the  compass  by  a  nation  like  England  in  her 
alliances  proves.  The  present  war  is  repeating 
and  illustrating  what  past  combinations  have 
abundantly  shown. 

VI.  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  NEUTRALITY,  AND 
SOVEREIGNTY  AND  INDEPENDENCE 
OP  NATIONS 189 

The  whole  history  of  the  fight  for  neutral  right  is  a 
history  of  failure.  The  power  which  is  politically 
the  freest  and  most  liberal  in  the  world  has  by  its 
practice  tenaciously  prevented  any  enlargement  of 


CONTENTS  xv 

neutral  right.  Yet  it  has  shown  by  its  attitude  in 
peace  time  towards  international  law  a  desire  to 
respect  those  rights.  This  seems  to  indicate  that 
it  is  impossible  to  reconcile  belligerent  necessity  at 
sea  with  real  observance  of  neutral  right.  In  that 
case  would  not  neutrals  better  secure  their  larger 
and  more  permanent  interest  by  the  modification 
of  the  doctrine  of  neutrality  as  at  present  under- 
stood in  the  direction  of  economic  discrimination 
as  against  the  side  that  has  refused  to  submit  its 
case  to  inquiry  and  so  violated  the  international 
conventions  designed  to  protect  the  integrity  of 
states?  This  is  a  fulfillment  of  the  Grotian  antici- 
pation concerning  neutrality  and  will  be  in  keep- 
ing with  future  conditions  if  the  guarantors  of 
neutrality  treaties  should  be  largely  increased  in 
number.  Would  the  assumption  of  limited  inter- 
national obligation  of  this  kind  expose  states  to 
greater  risk  or  cost,  or  surrender  of  sovereignty  and 
independence  than  is  involved  in  their  position  in 
war  time  under  existing  arrangements? 

VII.     THE  ULTIMATE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER.  .     231 

If  the  struggle  for  power  is  the  struggle  of  rival 
groups  for  sustenance  in  a  world  of  limited  space 
and  opportunity,  if  war  is  really,  as  in  the  prevail- 
ing conception  it  is,  a  "struggle  for  bread,"  it  is  in- 
evitable between  men  and  will  go  on.  If  one  of 
two  parties  must  eat  the  other  the  two  cannot  come 
to  a  really  amicable  agreement  about  the  matter. 
Even  if  this  is  not  the  case,  but  mankind  remains 
persuaded  that  it  is  so,  war  will  also  continue. 
But  in  that  case  it  would  be  a  struggle  not  of  neces- 
sity, but  of  misunderstanding  which  better  think- 
ing and  adjustment  could  dispose  of  as  it  disposed 
of  religious  wars,  the  cessation  of  which  proves 
clearly  that  some  of  man's  deepest  passions  can  be 
redirected  by  a  different  interpretation  of  facts — 
knowledge.  Is  the  "expansion"  of  states  a  real 
need?  Nearly  all  political  philosophy  and  public 
discussion  avoid  that  question,  but  until  we  have 
made  up  our  mind  on  it  all  schemes  of  world 
organization  must  necessarily  be  frustrated  owing, 
among  other  factors,  to  the  elusive  processes 
of  the  psychology  of  fear. 

VIII.    NON-MILITARY     MEANS    OF    INTER- 
NATIONAL COERCION 297 

Any  method  of  defence  in  the  modern  world,  in- 
cluding the  military,  involves  a  large  measure  of 


xvi  CONTENTS 

international  agreement:  the  present  war  has  neces- 
sitated a  military  alliance  between  nine  separate 
and  very  diverse  states  and  may  finally  number 
more.  Yet  despite  this  large  measure  of  agreement, 
one  force,  that  of  economic  pressure,  which  might 
tell  most  effectively  against  Germany,  may  be 
largely  ineffective;  partly  because  of  "leakages" 
owing  to  the  position  of  neutrals,  but  much  more 
because  the  pressure  will  come  to  an  end  as  soon  as 
the  war  is  over.  Yet  much  of  the  motive  of  aggres- 
sive war — the  desire  for  "culture  domination"  and 
commerical  expansion — could  be  neutralized  and 
even  reversed  if  the  cost  of  aggression  were  world- 
wide exclusion  of  both  the  culture  and  the  com- 
merce of  the  aggressor,  not  merely  during  a  war, 
but  until  such  time  as  the  aggressive  policy  were 
modified.  Recent  facts  go  to  show  that  the  very 
highly  developed  means  of  co-ordinated  effort 
which  nations  now  possess  would  make  this  method 
effective  where  in  the  past  it  would  not  have  been. 
In  any  case  its  worth  as  a  practical  means  de- 
pends, not  upon  its  absolute  effectiveness  as  an 
instrument  of  international  coercion,  but  its  rela- 
tive effectiveness  as  compared  to  present  methods, 
or  as  an  aid  thereto. 


CHAPTER  I 

AMERICA,  THE  SEA  AND  THE  SOCIETY 
OF  NATIONS 


Why  the  world  does  not  fear  British  "marinism"  and 
does  fear  German  militarism.  "Marinism"  does  not  en- 
croach on  social  and  political  freedom  and  militarism 
does.  The  difference  between  the  character  of  British 
and  German  political  expansion.  Is  it  in  America's  best 
interest  to  attempt  in  defence  of  neutral  trading  right 
to  limit  the  British  Sea  Power?  Relative  unimportance 
of  the  trade  interests  out  of  which  the  dispute  has  arisen. 
The  alternative  courses  of  action  before  the  United  States. 
The  course  here  suggested  and  an  indication  of  the 
grounds  upon  which  it  will  be  defended  in  this  book. 


CHAPTER  I 

AMERICA,  THE  SEA  AND  THE  SOCIETY 
OF  NATIONS 


ERTAIN  German  writers  on  international 
questions  have  expressed  their  frank  as- 
tonishment that  while  the  world  has  talked  a 
great  deal  of  the  menace  of  German  militarism, 
it  has  had  relatively  little  to  say  of  the  menace  of 
British  "marinism."  The  reason  however  is  not 
far  to  seek.  British  naval  predominance,  be  its 
effects  what  they  may,  is  not  in  any  case  a  "men- 
ace" —  it  is  an  accomplished  fact.  The  world  has 
very  long  been  subject  to  whatever  is  involved  in 
it.  We  know  the  worst  about  it  and  have  learned 
that  in  normal  times  —  in  times  of  peace  —  it  does 
not  constitute  a  very  grievous  tyranny. 

The  "freedom  of  the  seas"  is  a  phrase  very 
loosely  used.  In  the  century  which  has  been 
marked  by  England's  unquestioned  naval  pre- 
dominance the  ships  of  all  nations  have  in  peace 
time  sailed  the  seas  without  let  or  hindrance; 
England's  power  has  given  England's  commerce 
no  privilege  not  freely  possessed  by  the  com- 
merce of  all  other  nations.  It  is  true  that  many 

3 


4  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

who  discuss  naval  policies  and  international  affairs 
generally,  often  assume  that  in  some  way  "naval 
supremacy"  can  secure  for  the  nation  possessing 
it,  trade  that  could  not  otherwise  be  secured, 
can  in  some  way,  even  in  peace  times,  direct  the 
currents  of  trade  in  its  favour.1  And  it  is  likely 
that  such  a  theory  has  played  a  large  part  in 
the  general  competition  for  naval  power.  But 
there  are  no  facts  to  support  it,  and  those  who 
give  expression  to  it  as  though  it  were  a  self- 
evident  proposition  have  never  explained  in  what 
manner  sea  supremacy  can  operate  in  this  way, 
indicated  how  the  alleged  process  is  supposed 
to  work.  One  wonders,  for  instance,  how  they 
would  explain  the  fact  that  the  great  period  of 
expansion  in  German  overseas  trade — a  period  in 
which  Germans  were  "capturing"  British  trade 
in  every  quarter  of  the  globe — was  a  period  in 
which  German  naval  power  hardly  counted ;  when 
the  German  came  fourth  or  fifth  upon  the  list  of 
the  world's  navies.  England  was  simply  unable  to 
use  her  naval  supremacy  in  any  way  to  prevent 
this  development,  at  least  in  so  far  as  most  of  it 
was  concerned.  In  certain  of  her  Asiatic  pro- 
tectorates doubtless  she  could  have  erected  bar- 
riers against  foreign  trade.  But  it  is  one  of  the 
curiosities  of  the  situation  we  are  discussing  that 
it  is  the  nations  which  are  not  very  great  sea 

'See  p.  246. 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS  5 

powers  that  exclude  trade  rivals  most  rigorously 
from  their  overseas  protectorates,  colonies,  and 
coastal  traffic.  France,  Holland,  Italy,  and  even 
Portugal  all  exact  a  certain  measure  of  prefer- 
ence for  their  trade  with  their  overseas  territories 
and  always  have  done  so.  Some  of  them,  like 
France,  exclude  foreign  shipping  from  their 
coastwise  trade.  These  are  evidently  powers 
therefore  that  do  not  depend  upon  the  possession 
of  naval  supremacy;  of  which  British  sea  suprem- 
acy has  not  robbed  them  and  which  the  nation 
possessing  naval  supremacy  does  not  happen  to 
exercise. 

Incidentally  it  may  be  worth  while  to  point 
out  that  German  commercial  men  as  a  whole 
have  recognised  the  facts  of  this  situation  more 
clearly  perhaps  than  the  statesmen,  political  doc- 
trinaires, and  admirals.  The  big  navy  agitation 
of  Germany,  at  least  in  its  earlier  stages,  got 
much  more  support  from  Pan-German  newspaper 
writers  and  Chauvinist  publicists  generally  than 
it  did  from  Germans  actually  engaged  in  the  busi- 
ness of  building  up  Germany's  foreign  trade. 
Indeed  we  may  say  that  however  strenuously  the 
political  doctrinaires  may  have  urged  the  eco- 
nomic advantage  of  sea  power,  the  work-a-day 
world  never  felt  that  England's  supremacy  in  it 
weighed  upon  them  in  any  way;  and  would  be 
largely  indifferent  to  it  were  not  vague  fears  and 


6  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

prejudices  stirred  by  portentous  political  theories. 

But  there  are  further  reasons  why  the  world  as 
a  whole  has  not  placed  British  marinism  upon 
the  same  plane  as  German  militarism.  Militarism 
of  the  modern  continental  type — "the  armed 
nation" — affects  directly  and  heavily  every 
family  in  the  nation;  necessitates  the  shaping 
to  its  ends  the  whole  life  and  character,  the 
moral  and  social  outlook  of  a  people.  Marinism 
does  not.  German  militarism  means  in  fact  the 
moulding  of  the  lives  of  individual  Germans  in  a 
certain  way ;  submitting  each  German  to  a  certain 
moral  training  and  intellectual  discipline.  It 
touches  his  conscience.  For  instance,  it  teaches 
(not  merely  a  certain  class  or  profession  but  the 
whole  nation)  that  in  certain  circumstances  the 
individual  does  not  possess  a  conscience :  that  the 
State  has  taken  it  over  for  purposes  that  transcend 
any  personal  question,  even  of  right  or  wrong. 

The  prof  oundest  human  values  are  thus  changed 
by  submitting  a  whole  nation  to  conscription, 
especially  when  it  is  done  with  German  thorough- 
ness. Nor  does  the  experience  of  France,  Russia, 
Austria  or  Italy  invalidate  this  conclusion, 
though  for  the  moment  it  is  convenient  to  over- 
look it.  Fifteen  years  ago,  however,  both  in 
England  and  America  the  Dreyfus  affair  was 
taken  as  demonstrating  that  these  moral  results 
had  gone  even  deeper  in  France  than  they  had  in 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS  7 

Germany.  But  to  the  extent  to  which  Germany 
set  the  pace  she  had  a  responsibility  in  advance 
of  the  others. 

Marinism  does  not  thus  affect  the  whole 
nation.  The  navy  is  not  the  nation  in  the  sense 
that  the  army  is  the  nation;  the  whole  manhood 
is  not  passed  through  its  mill.  The  navy,  even 
when  it  occupies  the  place  that  it  does  in  the 
British  state,  is  a  thing  apart  from  the  lives  of 
the  people:  it  does  not  subject  every  man  to  a 
uniform  moral  moulding  nor  is  it  compelled  to 
create  a  special  social  conscience  affecting  deeply 
ultimate  human  valuations  in  such  a  way  as  to 
touch  every  man's  character  and  work-a-day 
conduct. 

It  has  been  possible  for  England  to  ouild  up  a 
great  navy,  to  utilise  it,  to  render  it  efficient, 
without  having  to  create  a  new  doctrine  of  the 
State,  and  a  special  organisation  of  the  State  for 
the  purpose.  Political  doctrine  and  political 
organisation  have  developed  irrespective  of  the 
"needs  of  the  navy."  And  though  it  may  be  true 
that  it  is  British  sea  power  which  has  made  North 
America  much  more  an  English  continent  than  a 
Dutch,  French,  and  Spanish  one,  it  did  not  do  so 
by  any  process  analogous  to  the  process  that 
Germany  has  used  in  Alsace  and  Posen,  and 
Russia  in  Finland  and  Poland.  The  British  navy 
did  not  need  the  conscription  of  Canadian  citizens 


8  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

and  so  was  not  impelled  either  to  centralise  her 
Imperial  power  in  the  way  that,  since  Napoleon, 
the  military  States  of  Europe  have  steadily 
centralised  theirs,  nor  to  unify  organisation, 
language,  and  national  outlook  for  military  pur- 
poses. Political  power  based  mainly  upon  a  navy 
permits  of  much  freer  and  looser  national  organ- 
isation than  does  political  power  based  mainly 
upon  an  army.  This  has  given  us  a  type  of 
"Empire"  never  before  known  in  the  world — a 
political  organisation  which  is  indeed  not  an 
Empire  properly  speaking  at  all,  but  a  congeries 
of  what  are  in  fact  independent  states  linked  by 
a  few  but  very  powerful  common  social  and  po- 
litical ideals;  on  the  whole  the  most  inspiring,  as 
it  is  certainly  the  most  successful  type  of  political 
co-operation  between  separate  national  units  that 
the  world  has  yet  seen,  furnishing  what  is  prob- 
ably the  best  model  for  the  world  state  of  the 
future. 

One  of  its  outstanding  features — and  this  again 
is  one  which  it  is  essential  to  realise  in  estimating 
the  relative  "menace"  of  militarism  and  marin- 
ism,  of  British  and  German  power — is  that 
British  Imperial  authority  is  not,  as  a  matter  of 
actual  fact,  imposed  at  all  and  does  not  reside  upon 
force.  The  self-governing  parts  of  the  British 
Empire  have  passed — to  use  the  language  of  the 
political  schoolmen — from  a  condition  of  "status" 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS  9 

to  that  of  "contract."  For  all  practical  purposes  the 
independence  of  the  self-governing  British  colo- 
nies has  been  recognised,  particularly  in  modern 
English  practice,  over  and  over  again.  It  is  not 
merely  that  the  colonies  have  the  full  right  to  create 
what  tariff  or  exclusion  laws  against  the  Mother 
country  that  they  please,  but  that  by  a  curious 
anomaly,  Great  Britain  has  by  established  practice 
surrendered  in  her  own  colonies  rights  which 
under  international  law  she  would  possess  in  for- 
eign countries.  This  was  illustrated,  for  instance, 
in  the  conflict  which  arose  between  India  and 
Natal  over  the  treatment  of  British  Indians  in  the 
latter  country ;  and  by  the  action  of  General  Botha, 
Prime  Minister  of  the  South  African  Union,  in 
expelling  certain  Englishmen  from  the  Trans- 
vaal at  the  time  of  labour  troubles  there.  It  is 
certain  that  if  the  acts  of  Natal  and  the  South 
African  Union  in  these  cases  had  been  committed 
by  a  foreign  country,  Britain  would  have  taken 
steps  to  protect  the  interests  of  her  Indian  sub- 
jects in  the  one  case  and  English  ones  in  the 
other,  under  the  ordinary  treaty  rights  which  she 
possesses.  But  the  British  government  was 
virtually  helpless  in  the  presence  of  the  Colonial 
government  of  Natal  and  of  that  of  General 
Botha.2  This,  and  many  similar  instances,  could 

'For  specific  details  on  Colonial  relationship  see  "The  Great 
Illusion"  (Chap,  vii,  Part  I),  Putnams. 


io  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

be  quoted  to  show  that  in  reality,  though  perhaps 
not  by  constitutional  form,  the  British  Empire 
does  not  rest  upon  authority  or  force,  but  upon 
agreement :  it  is  an  alliance  of  free  states. 

The  point  does  not  need  labouring  therefore 
that  as  between  the  moral  quality  of  that  type 
of  political  society  which  is  the  outcome  of  mili- 
tarism on  the  one  hand  and  marinism  on  the 
other  there  are  vast  differences  which  justify  the 
world  in  declining  to  put  the  British  menace  in 
the  same  category  as  the  German  one. 

And  yet,  as  I  write  these  lines,  the  President  of 
the  United  States  is  busily  engaged  in  asserting 
as  against  Great  Britain,  and  on  behalf  of  Amer- 
ican commercial  interest,  certain  rights  of  neutral 
trade  which  must  result  in  limiting  the  effective- 
ness of  sea  power  as  a  weapon  against  Germany 
and  so  adding  to  the  final  chances  of  German  vic- 
tory. Indeed  in  one  communication  to  Germany 
he  implies  that  America  has  generally  in  the  past 
taken  the  German  view  of  sea  rights  as  against 
the  British  (and  even  if  that  is  not  the  implication 
it  happens  to  be  the  fact).  In  the  passage  I  have 
in  mind  the  Secretary  of  State,  speaking  for  the 
American  government,  says : 

The  Government  of  the  United  States  and  the  Imperial 
German  Government  are  contending  for  the  same  great 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS          11 

object,  have  long  stood  together  in  urging  the  very 
principles  upon  which  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  now  so  solemnly  insists.  They  are  both  contend- 
ing for  the  freedom  of  the  seas.  The  Government  of 
the  United  States  will  continue  to  contend  for  that 
freedom,  from  whatever  quarter  violated,  without  com- 
promise and  at  any  cost.  It  invites  the  practical  co- 
operation of  the  Imperial  German  Government  at  this 
time,  when  co-operation  may  accomplish  most  and  this 
great  common  object  be  most  strikingly  and  effectively 
achieved. 

The  Imperial  German  Government  expresses  the  hope 
that  this  object  may  be  in  some  measure  accomplished 
even  before  the  present  war  ends.  It  can  be.  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  .  .  .  feels  obliged 
to  insist  upon  it,  by  whomsoever  violated  or  ignored,  in 
the  protection  of  its  own  citizens.3 

This  passage  and  subsequently  the  energetic  de- 
fence of  neutral  right  as  against  any  extension 
of  belligerent  right  by  Great  Britain  has  puzzled 
many  Americans,  as  it  certainly  created  uneasi- 
ness in  the  minds  of  many  Englishmen.  It  goes 
some  way  to  confirm  the  impression  that  on  behalf 
of  commercial  interest  Americans  are  content  to 
harass  the  employment  of  that  sea  power  which 
for  a  hundred  years  has  never  threatened  them 
and  which — in  the  opinion  of  very  many  Amer- 
icans themselves — stands  between  them  and  a 
dire  military  tyranny. 

'Note  of  July  21,  1915. 


12  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

To  put  it  at  its  lowest,  has  not  the  United  States 
a  greater  interest  in  the  maintenance  of  belliger- 
ent rights  at  sea,  which  means  the  effectiveness 
of  sea  power?  "If  the  German  submarine  cam- 
paign should  be  successful,"  says  one  American 
authority,4  "and  British  sea  power  be  rendered 
ineffective  for  the  protection  of  trade  routes  the 
disaster  which  threatens  the  British  Empire 
would  be  in  large  measure  shared  by  the  United 
States.  The  existing  dependence  of  this  country 
on  British  Maritime  supremacy  for  its  prosperity 
and  even  its  safety  is  complete,  and  under  the 
present  critical  conditions  appalling.  American 
exports  and  imports  are  carried  almost  entirely 
in  British  bottoms.  American  citizens  are  obliged 
to  reach  Europe  on  ships  flying  the  British  flag. 
The  Monroe  Doctrine  has  been  allowed  to 
flourish  under  the  benevolent  protection  of 
British  sea  power.  The  British  fleet  affords  the 
only  real  guarantee  for  the  security  of  the 
Panama  canal." 

Surely  there  are  interests  here  greater  than 
the  mere  trade  interests  of  certain  exporters 
whose  goods  happen  to  be  held  up  or  delayed? 

Whatever  our  decision  in  this  matter  of  sea 
rights  this  much  is  clear:  that  the  mere  trade 
interests  under  discussion  between  the  American 

*The  New  Republic,  May  15,  1915. 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS          13 

and  British  governments  are  relatively  a  small 
and  temporary  thing  compared  to  the  principles 
of  belligerent  right  involved  in  the  discussion. 
It  is  these  which  are  the  permanent  and  important 
things:  in  which  the  future  of  civilisation  is 
involved. 

This  last  phrase  is  so  hackneyed  and  over- 
worked that  we  lose  its  meaning.  Yet  it  means 
here  just  what  it  says.  On  the  outcome  of  this 
question — an  outcome  which  American  action  will 
very  largely  determine  for  the  world — depend  the 
kind  of  lives  that  we  shall  lead  in  the  future,  the 
objects  which  they  will  embody;  our  freedom  per- 
haps in  disposing  of  them,  the  morality  that  will 
guide  them. 

In  the  pages  that  follow  an  attempt  is  made 
to  bring  into  relief  some  of  the  facts  which  must 
be  weighed  in  considering  just  what,  for  our 
common  welfare  in  the  western  world,  is  the  best 
course  with  reference  to  neutral  and  belligerent 
right  at  sea,  and  the  exercise  of  sea  power. 

We  are  faced  by  the  possibility  of  three 
courses:  To  confirm  and  fortify  belligerent 
right,  leaving  its  exercise  to  the  power  command- 
ing the  sea  for  the  time  being,  which  would  be 
the  result  of  accepting  the  British  position  in  the 
present  dispute;  to  attempt  to  secure  the  limita- 
tion of  belligerent  right  and  the  protection  of 
neutral  right  by  the  strengthening  of  interna- 


14  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

tional  law;  or  to  maintain  or  even  enlarge  bel- 
ligerent right,  but  internationalise  its  exercise 
in  some  form.  This  involves  the  abolition  of 
neutrality  as  now  conceived.  The  rights  of 
nations  as  a  whole  would  rest,  not  upon  their 
holding  aloof  from  conflicts  which  may  arise,  but 
upon  their  participation  to  the  end  of  securing 
respect  for  certain  things  like  inviolability  of  ter- 
ritory which  represent  needs  that  are  common 
to  all. 

I  am  suggesting  tentatively  that  solution  will 
be  found  in  the  direction  of  the  last  course  and 
have  in  the  pages  that  follow  given  the  reasons 
why.  Just  what  that  method  means  and  how  it 
might  be  applied  in  certain  circumstances  even  in 
the  present  war  can  best  be  made  clear  by  repro- 
ducing the  terms  of  a  definite  proposal  made  as 
the  reply  to  certain  questions  which  Americans, 
in  the  Lusitania  affair  were  compelled  to  ask 
themselves;  the  questions  and  reply  being  as 
follows : 

Must  America  either  lamely  accept  with 
humiliating  inertia  a  gross  violation  of  her 
own  right  and  dignity  and  of  the  common 
interest,  or  else  take  part  in  a  war  which 
however  successful  will  not  necessarily  ad- 
vance in  the  least  degree  the  objects  for 
which  she  fights — the  future  safety  of  her 
citizens  and  respect  of  their  rights  in  war 
time,  a  better  international  law  and  its  more 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS          15 

scrupulous  future  observance — and  which 
conceivably  might  even  render  those  objects 
more  remote  than  ever? 

Is  there  no  third  course? 

Events  have  already  pointed  to  a  possible 
one. 

Great  Britain  is  at  this  moment  engaged 
in  negotiating  with  the  merchants  of  neutral 
countries  as  to  the  conditions  upon  which 
they  shall  be  allowed  to  trade  with  one  an- 
other, the  object  of  course  being  to  prevent 
Germany  securing  supplies  of  any  kind 
through  neutral  sources.  This  amounts  ob- 
viously to  an  attempt  to  control  the  inter- 
national trade  of  the  world  in  such  a  way  as 
to  serve  Great  Britain's  military  purposes. 

The  United  States  government,  as  apart 
from  certain  of  her  merchants,  has  of  course 
refused  to  take  part  in  these  negotiations 
for  obvious  reasons:  this  right  to  lay  down 
the  conditions  of  trade  between  neutrals, 
irrespective  of  blockade  and  contraband  as 
heretofore  understood,  constitutes  a  very 
pregnant  development  of  belligerent  rights 
at  sea.  However  much  the  American  people 
may  approve  England's  general  cause  in  this 
war,  the  American  government  could  not 
allow  such  development  to  become  by  prece- 
dent an  accepted  part  of  sea  law,  because  in 
some  future  war  such  functions  might  be 
exercised  by  a  power  other  than  England  on 
behalf  of  a  cause  of  quite  other  character. 
Moreover,  it  is  freely  alleged  by  American 
merchants  that  British  control  of  neutral 


16  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

trade  is  not  exercised  impartially:  that, 
while  on  the  ground  of  preventing  supplies 
reaching  Germany,  Great  Britain  has  ex- 
cluded American  merchandise  from  neutral 
ports,  British  goods  of  the  same  kind  have 
been  going  to  those  ports  in  increasing  quan- 
tities. Whatever  of  truth  there  may  be  in 
this  allegation  it  is  evident  that  if  ever  bel- 
ligerent right  expanded  into  the  formal 
recognition  of  the  kind  of  control  over 
neutral  trade  aimed  at  by  Great  Britain,  it 
is  just  such  abuses  as  these  from  which 
neutrals  would  in  future  suffer. 

The  whole  matter  is  at  this  moment  the 
subject  of  very  serious  negotiation  between 
Washington  and  London  and  the  cause  of 
some  illfeeling  between  sections  of  the  two 
countries. 

Yet  this  very  situation  might  in  the  event 
of  rupture  of  diplomatic  negotiations  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  Germany  be  so 
handled  as  to  become  not  merely  a  means  of 
solving  the  special  and  present  American 
difficulties  concerning  neutral  rights  and 
interests,  but  of  achieving  the  larger  purpose 
of  developing  a  really  civilized  international 
law  and  finding  some  means  of  enforcing 
it  more  efficient  than  the  very  clumsy  instru- 
ment military  force  has  proven  itself  so  far 
to  be.  Out  of  the  Anglo-American  negotia- 
tions might  develop  an  understanding  afford- 
ing means  of  avoiding  the  absurd  stultifica- 
tion which  mere  military  co-operation  with 
the  Allies  would  involve  for  America — the 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS          17 

position  that  is  of  fighting  a  war  to  assure 
the  victory  of  one  side,  to  find  after  the 
war,  perhaps,  that  that  side  is  as  much  op- 
posed to  any  form  of  international  law  at 
sea  which  will  really  protect  American  and 
neutral  right  and  interest  as  is  the  beaten 
side. 

For,  if  the  suggestion  which  follows 
proves  feasible,  the  constructive  develop- 
ment in  international  law  of  some  sanction 
enabling  the  community  of  nations  to  en- 
force it,  would  not  wait  the  end  of  war  nor 
be  dependent  upon  a  definite  victory  of  one 
side,  but  would  take  place  during  the  war 
and  would  later  still  be  operative  even  though 
the  Allies  were  not  decisively  victorious  in  a 
military  sense. 

Let  us  assume  a  rupture  of  diplomatic 
relations  between  America  and  Germany — 
a  contingency  which  recent  events  seem  to 
render  not  altogether  impossible.  America 
would  in  such  an  event  in  any  case  put  her 
defences  in  as  thorough  order  as  possible, 
though  the  likelihood  of  Germany  sending  an 
army  across  the  Atlantic  at  this  juncture  is, 
to  say  the  least,  small.  But  American  naval 
force  would  probably  prepare  to  be  in  a  posi- 
tion to  convoy  ships  and  so  forth.5 

America  should  certainly  make  it  plain  to 
Germany — and  to  the  Allies  for  that  matter 

"This  was  written  during  the  acute  phase  of  the  negotiations 
with  Germany.  Even  though  the  crisis  pass,  the  plan  suggested 
is  best  illustrated  by  applying  it  to  an  actual  case.  It  has  there- 
fore been  left  in  its  original  form. 


18  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

— that  the  absence  of  American  military  co- 
operation with  the  armies  now  fighting  Ger- 
many was  not  due  to  mere  indifference  to 
the  causes  involved,  still  less  to  a  desire  self- 
ishly to  avoid  the  cost  and  suffering  of  war 
in  the  achievement  of  her  purpose,  but  be- 
cause both  her  own  and  the  larger  and 
ultimate  general  interest  could  be  more 
effectively  achieved  by  another  form  of  co- 
operation, which  would  be  as  follows : 

America  would  offer  to  settle  the  whole 
contraband  and  blockade  dispute  with  Eng- 
land on  the  basis  of  making  international  that 
virtual  control  of  the  overseas  trade  of  the 
world  which  England  now  exercises.  That 
is  to  say,  all  that  international  trade  now 
affected  by  British  action  should  still  be 
subject  to  control  for  the  definite  purpose  of 
preventing  Germany  securing  supplies;  but 
that  control  should  be  exercised,  not  arbi- 
trarily by  Great  Britain  but  by  all  the  Allies 
plus  the  United  States  and  with  the  unofficial 
co-operation  of  the  remaining  neutrals  as 
well.  Prize  courts  and  courts  of  control 
should  not  be  British  but  representative  of  all 
these  powers.  The  arrangement  would  in 
the  circumstances  amount  to  an  inter- 
national control  of  the  world's  supplies  for 
the  purpose  of  withholding  them  from  Ger- 
many, and  in  such  a  way  as  to  avoid  diffi- 
culty between  the  combatants  and  between 
them  and  the  neutrals,  and  as  to  render  the 
blockade  or  siege  of  Germany  effective  not 
merely  by  sea  power,  but  by  co-operation 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS          19 

between  the  nations  of  the  world  as  a 
whole. 

Such  an  international  body  made  up  of 
representatives  of  America,  Britain  and  her 
colonies,  France,  Russia,  Italy,  Belgium, 
Japan  and,  less  officially,  of  the  Scandinavian 
and  Balkan  states,  Holland,  Switzerland  and 
Greece  would  not  deal  merely  with  matters 
of  exports  and  imports,  with  trade  between 
them,  but  with  financial  arrangements  as 
well — with  exchange  and  credit  difficulties, 
loans,  censorship  of  mails  and  all  the  thorny 
problems  that  have  arisen  during  the  war. 
From  these  matters  it  might  perhaps  pro- 
ceed to  deal  with  such  problems  as  the  dis- 
posal of  German  property — interned  ships, 
businesses  of  various  kinds,  royalties  on 
patents,  bank  balances  and  so  forth — and,  it 
may  be,  more  remote  arrangements  as  to  the 
future  control  of  German  action  in  the 
world:  tariff  arrangements,  the  conditions 
upon  which  Germany  should  at  the  peace  be 
once  more  admitted  to  the  community  of 
nations,  whether  on  equal  terms  or  not; 
whether  the  most  efficient  means  of  exacting 
some  indemnification  for  damage  done  might 
not  be  by  sequestration  of  German  property 
throughout  the  world  and  possibly  some  sur- 
tax by  tariff,  ship  and  mail  dues,  all  of  course 
subject  to  due  legal  judgment  of  an  inter- 
national court. 

In  short,  there  would  be  in  the  bodies  so 
created,  the  beginnings  of  the  world  organ- 
isation of  our  common  resources,  social, 


20  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

economical  and  political,  for  the  purpose  of 
dealing  with  a  recalcitrant  member  of  inter- 
national society,  by  other  than  purely  mili- 
tary means — a  starting  point  whence  inter- 
national law  might  be  made  a  reality,  a  code 
that  is,  not  merely  expressing  the  general 
interest  but  sanctioning  processes  which  fur- 
nish means  of  enforcing  respect  for  it. 

This  control  would  centre  at  first  mainly  in 
America,  since  during  the  course  of  the  war 
the  activities  and  resources  of  the  existing 
belligerent  nations  would  more  and  more  be 
absorbed  by  military  operations,  thus  making 
America  the  largest  single  source  of  sup- 
plies, money  and  ammunition. 

If  the  war  goes  on  a  year  or  so,  the  finan- 
cial drain  upon  England  by  reason  of  her 
immense  foreign  purchase  is  likely  to  come 
near  crippling  her  credit ;  whether  the  Allies 
could  go  on  indefinitely  purchasing  material 
from  outside  sources,  might  well  become  the 
determining  question  of  the  war's  issue.  If 
the  United  States  were  to  assume  the  respon- 
sibility of  furnishing  munitions  and  material 
upon  such  terms  as  to  sustain  British  credit 
and  liberate  an  increasing  proportion  of  the 
European  manufacturing  population  for 
military  service,  this  country  could  by  purely 
economic  co-operation,  make  a  decisive  con- 
tribution to  the  coercion  of  Germany. 

But  though  America's  economic  position 
would  be  dominant  at  such  juncture,  she 
should  deliberately  internationalise  the  con- 
trol it  would  imply,  not  using  it  to  impose  an 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS         21 

American  view,  but  for  the  purpose  of  secur- 
ing adherence  to  the  common  rules  drawn  up 
for  the  common  good. 

Let  us  see  how  far  the  general  method 
here  indicated  might  apply  to  a  later  situa- 
tion of  the  war. 

If  Europe  is  to  crush  Germany  within  her 
own  borders,  and  keep  her  crushed,  it  will 
be  at  the  price  of  the  Prussianisation  of  the 
whole  of  Europe.  To  exact  indemnities  from 
Germany  will  mean  the  military  occupation 
of  her  territories,  and  that  means  the  main- 
tenance perhaps  for  many  years  of  large 
armies  by  the  Allies.  To  break  up  the  German 
Empire  would  mean  the  annexation  of  some 
of  her  territory  and  the  turning  of  the 
western  allies  into  conquerors  and  military 
rulers  of  alien  (German)  populations.  And 
yet  the  alternative  for  Europe  is  to  allow 
Germany  after  the  peace,  to  build  up  her 
strength  and  wealth  so  involving  the  possi- 
bility, five  or  ten  or  fifteen  years  hence,  of  a 
recuperated  Germany  still  dreaming  of  world 
domination.  That  is  to  say  that  would  be 
the  alternative  if  the  action  of  the  western 
world  were  limited  to  military  action.  But 
if  we  can  assume  the  international  control 
of  the  world's  wealth  in  some  such  a  way  as 
that  above  indicated,  well  established,  hav- 
ing gone  on  for  some  time,  you  get  a  situa- 
tion in  which  the  channels  of  trade  would  for 
prolonged  periods  have  been  turned  away 
from  Germany  and  a  situation  also  in  which, 
for  instance,  Germany's  enemies  would  con- 


22  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

trol  virtually  every  pound  of  cotton  grown  in 
the  world.  And  the  needs  of  the  war  would 
have  engendered  between  those  enemies 
much  mutual  helpfulness  in  the  way  of  loans, 
credit  arrangements,  etc.,  and  with  their  re- 
sources organised  and  their  action  co-ordi- 
nated by  central  international  organs.  If 
such  a  situation  existed,  German  aggression 
would  be  faced  by  forces  that  military  power 
could  not  meet. 

In  applying  the  general  principle  underlying 
this  proposal  to  the  normal  international  situa- 
tion, I  am  suggesting  that  the  economic  action 
in  this  case  urged  upon  the  non-Teutonic  powers, 
should  in  future  be  taken  against  any  nation 
which  goes  to  war  without  submitting  its  case 
at  least  to  enquiry.  The  community  of  nations 
would  thus  not  be  obliged  to  pass  upon  the 
merits  of  any  given  dispute  in  order  to  decide 
upon  which  side  their  economic  aid  should  be 
thrown:  the  anti-social  nation,  the  offender 
against  the  world's  order,  the  aggressor  would 
be  the  one  which,  in  any  dispute,  used  its  force 
against  another  without  submitting  its  case  to 
international  examination.  The  international 
community  would  be  justified  in  coming  to  this 
conclusion,  irrespective  of  the  ultimate  merits  of 
the  case,  just  as  within  the  nation  the  law  re- 
strains an  individual  who,  making  himself  judge 
of  his  own  case  in  a  difference  with  another, 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS         23 

seizes  the  goods  of  that  other  in  execution  of  his 
own  judgment.  Even  though  the  claim  on  be- 
half of  which  the  seizure  was  made  prove  well 
founded,  the  act  of  force  is  nevertheless  a  chal- 
lenge to  all  social  order.  If  allowed  as  a  principle 
between  men,  law  would  disappear  and  society 
would  go  to  pieces.  Thus,  also,  under  the  same 
illustration,  the  group  of  nations  resisting  the 
action  of  one  using  its  force  in  defiance  of  inter- 
national examination,  represent  the  "community," 
and  although  only  a  majority,  their  decisions  may 
have  the  sanctity  of  international  law.  This  is 
the  ethical  justification  of  the  suggestions  here 
made. 

Some  of  the  more  obvious  objections  thereto 
are  dealt  with  in  the  final  chapter  of  this  book. 
Among  the  reasons  which  have  prompted  the  sug- 
gestions and  which  are  discussed  in  greater  detail 
in  the  pages  that  follow  are  these: 

(i)  History  reveals  repeated  and  striking 
failure  of  the  attempt  to  limit  belligerent  right  at 
sea  and  enlarge  neutral  right.  Even  if  we  could 
assume  international  law  enforcible  by  neutral 
against  belligerent  it  would,  unless  radically  en- 
larged, offer  but  feeble  protection.  That  law  is 
so  far  mainly  case  law,  a  matter  of  precedent. 
And  a  neutral  who  goes  to  war  to  vindicate  his 
right  becomes  by  that  fact  a  belligerent  and  in 
the  attempt  to  make  his  action  effective  tends  by 


24  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

his  conduct  to  enlarge  belligerent  right.  There  is 
thus  a  tendency  for  belligerents  to  secure  practical 
immunity  for  violation  of  neutral  right — as  the 
present  war  illustrates. 

(2)  In  so  far  as  the  conception  of  neutrality  is 
based  on  the  assumption  that  the  nations  not 
actually  participating  in  a  war  have  no  concern 
therein;  that  they  are  without  obligation  to 
either  belligerent  and  can  be  partitioned  off  from 
its  effects,  the  conception  is  based  on  a  series  of 
fictions.  By  the  growth  of  their  mutual  relations 
and  the  increase  of  interdependence  between 
them,  the  nations  do  in  fact  form  a  society,  and 
if  they  are  to  recognise  the  implications  of  that 
fact  neutrality  in  any  real  sense  in  the  case  of  a 
great  war  is  no  longer  possible.  An  examination 
of  the  process  by  which  the  largest  degree  of 
freedom  and  independence  has  been  secured  for 
the  individuals  of  any  human  society — as  for  in- 
stance in  the  communities  within  the  state — re- 
veals a  gradual  abandonment  of  the  attitude  of 
"neutrality/'  A  community  which  is  "neutral" 
when  one  of  its  members  is  the  victim  of  another 
using  his  force  to  defy  the  law  designed  for  the 
protection  of  all  is  a  community  in  which  the  free- 
dom of  all  is  in  danger.  Society  within  the  State 
has  only  been  able  to  solve  the  problem  of  bel- 
ligerent versus  neutral  rights  by  abolishing  neu- 
trality and  becoming  itself  the  belligerent. 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS         25 

(3)  The  application  of  this  analogy  to  the  case 
of  the  nation  does  not  necessarily  imply  the  crea- 
tion of  an  "International  Police"  or  navy.    One 
of  the  most  powerful  weapons  of  sea  power — 
perhaps  in  most  cases  likely  to  arise  the  most 
powerful — is  that  which  in  existing  usage  enables 
the  combatant  that  commands  the  sea  to  compel 
neutrals  to  enter  into  economic  alliance  with  him 
and  against  his  enemy  by  making  it  impossible 
for  the  latter  to  secure  ammunition  supplies  etc. 
while  being  free  to  do  so  himself.    Yet  this  power- 
ful means  of  coercion  in  the  last  resort  depends 
upon  the  action  of  neutrals  which  they  are  free  to 
withhold  if  they  will.    Each  nation  is  free  to  say 
whether  it  will  export  supplies  even  to  a  power 
in  command  of  the  sea.     This  option  enables 
neutrals  as  a  whole  to  decide  in  large  measure 
the  effectiveness  or  otherwise  of  command  of  the 
sea  by  a  belligerent.     The  exercise  of  such  an 
option  in  common  would  enable  them  to  transfer 
from  individuals  to  the  community  much  of  the 
power  inherent  in  command  of  the  sea. 

(4)  The  retention  of  predominant  sea  power  in 
the  hands  of  Anglo-Saxon  nations  does  not  neces- 
sarily imply  the  predominance  of  free  and  non- 
military  civilisation  as  against  the  military  form. 
Though  sea  power  is  still  in  certain  circumstances 
enormously  efficacious,  it  cannot  impose  political 
control  save  by  co-operation  with  military  allies ; 


26  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

and  the  relative  importance  of  the  military  arm 
in  the  combination  tends  to  become  greater. 
The  increasing  need  for  military  co-operation 
may  compel  a  sea  power  to  support  highly 
militarised  nations:  it  is  not  free  to  pick  and 
choose,  as  the  present  war  and  the  history 
of  the  last  hundred  years  abundantly  shows. 
Obviously  also  there  may  be  international  con- 
flicts in  which  sea  power  with  all  the  belligerent 
rights  that  Anglo-Saxon  practice  has  given  to  it, 
will  be  exercised  by  nations  other  than  England 
or  America.  If  it  becomes  the  recognised  right 
of  any  nation  which  can  secure  the  command 
of  the  sea  to  exercise  over  the  rest  the  powers 
now  contained  in  that  command — if  such  control 
over  the  affairs  of  the  world  is  made  contingent 
merely  upon  preponderant  naval  power  over  some 
rival  nation  or  group — then  the  struggle  for 
power  between  nations  will  go  on  in  intensified 
form  and  the  anarchy  which  it  connotes  become 
more  acute.  This  implies  the  progressive  mili- 
tarisation of  organised  society. 

(5)  The  alternative  is  some  process  by  which 
such  power  shall  be  transferred  from  rival  units 
to  the  community :  internationalised. 

The  plan  here  discussed  would  bring  that 
about  in  large  measure,  without  the  creation  of 
such  an  instrument  as  an  international  navy 
controlled  by  some  central  executive  body.  That 


AMERICA,  SEA,  AND  NATIONS         27 

may  be  a  possibility  of  the  future,  but  such 
schemes  must,  until  certain  other  changes  moral 
and  political  have  taken  place,  remain  paper 
schemes.  Nor  is  it  proposed  to  limit  the  powers 
exercised  by  Great  Britain  in  the  present  war. 
She  already,  in  the  exercise  of  those  powers,  acts 
as  the  mandatory  of  a  considerable  international 
body — of  eight  nations  at  least.  The  proposal 
is  still  further  to  internationalise  the  sanction 
of  that  control  and  to  systematise  certain  com- 
mon action  of  the  nations — not  necessarily 
military  action — in  such  way  as  to  make  the 
effectiveness  or  extent  of  sea  power,  or  com- 
mand of  the  sea,  dependent  upon  the  co-operation 
of  the  nations  as  a  whole.  The  mechanism 
of  such  control  is  explained  more  fully  in 
chapter  VIII.  It  constitutes  a  form  of  inter- 
national action  which,  while  less  cumbersome  and 
artificial  than  the  creation  of  an  international 
navy,  would  constitute  at  least  a  first  step  towards 
the  transfer  of  powers  just  referred  to.  Unless 
some  such  process  of  transfer  can  be  set  in  motion, 
that  freer  civilisation  which  the  British  Empire 
and  the  American  Republic  represent  is  likely  to 
be  transformed  into  the  Prussian  type.  The 
menace  of  everything  which  German  militarism 
connotes  will  be  increased,  even  though  the 
German  flag  disappear. 


CHAPTER  II 

AMERICAN   MILITARY  ACTION   IN 
EUROPE:  WHAT  WOULD  RESULT? 


America  could  not  achieve  the  objects  for  which  she  is 
contending  in  her  disputes  with  Germany  and  Britain 
merely  by  ensuring  the  military  victory  of  the  Allies,  since 
"the  goods  could  not  be  delivered"  at  the  Peace,  and  the 
mere  destruction  of  Austro-German  military  power  could 
neither  be  permanent  nor  give  any  assurance  that  future 
re-groupings  of  European  alliances  would  not  take  place 
creating  a  situation  as  unsatisfactory  in  the  future  as  in 
the  past.  The  impermanence  of  the  destruction  of  a 
nation's  military  power  and  the  mutability  of  military 
alliances  are  among  the  few  unquestionable  lessons  of 
history.1 

lfThis  chapter  was  written  shortly  after  the  sinking  of  the 
Lusitania,  when  America  was  confronted  by  the  question :  How 
far  will  the  fact  of  going  to  war  vindicate  the  rights  violated 
by  Germany's  act? 


CHAPTER  II 

AMERICAN   MILITARY  ACTION   IN 
EUROPE:  WHAT  WOULD  RESULT? 

WHAT  would  it  mean,  "a  state  of  war"  with 
a  country  whose  army  cannot  possibly 
touch  us,  whose  battleships  dare  not  take  the  high 
seas  and  whom  we  in  our  turn  can  only  reach  by 
co-operating  with  some  six  European  nations 
not  all  of  whom  are  fighting  with  the  same 
purpose  ? 

Does  a  declaration  of  war  by  ourselves  or  Ger- 
many necessarily  mean  sending  troops  to  France 
or  Turkey,  becoming  one  of  the  Allies  in  a  mili- 
tary sense,  and  later,  at  the  peace,  in  a  political 
sense,  helping  by  that,  whether  we  wished  it  or 
not,  certain  political  and  territorial  changes  which 
we  might  or  might  not  approve:  e.  g.,  an  ex- 
change of  Russian  for  Austro-German  influence 
in  large  areas?  Should  we  become  the  ally  of 
Japan,  constrained  perhaps,  like  her  other  allies, 
to  tolerate  a  very  broad  interpretation  of  such 
obligations  as  those  to  respect  the  integrity  of 
China  ?  And  if  our  weight  in  the  final  settlement 
is  to  be  measured  by  our  military  contribution — 

31 


32  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  number  of  men  who  fight  in  the  allied  ranks — 
and  not  by  non-military  factors,  will  not  the  de- 
mands of  Servia  (if  not  of  Montenegro)  by  that 
standard  get  greater  consideration? 

And  how  far  would  our  military  action  in  these 
circumstances  be  effective  in  achieving  what  we 
desire:  The  future  safety  of  our  citizens  and  the 
security  of  their  presumed  rights  at  sea;  the 
respect  of  international  agreements  upon  which 
those  rights  are  based ;  freedom  for  ourselves  and 
others  from  the  menace  of  unscrupulous  military 
ambition  and  the  barbarism  which  accompanies 
it?  And  how  far  would  our  military  co-opera- 
tion with  the  continental  powers  of  Europe  affect 
ultimately  our  place  in  the  world,  and  influence 
our  future  development  as  a  nation  with  a  special 
character  of  its  own?  Would  it  modify  that 
"American  purpose"  for  which  our  state  is  pre- 
sumed to  stand? 

Now  these  questions  would  be  important  if 
there  were  no  difficulty  with  Germany,  for  in 
some  form  the  issues  that  underlie  them  are  going 
to  be  permanent  issues  of  American  politics  in 
the  future.  Recent  events  have  made  it  plain, 
even  if  it  was  not  plain  before,  that  America 
cannot  achieve  her  purpose  as  a  great  society  by 
an  indifferent  standing  aloof  from  the  life  of  the 
world  as  a  whole.  As  our  planet  becomes  a 
smaller  place  and  the  contacts  more  numerous 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        33 

and  frequent,  the  nation  becomes  more  and  more 
a  part  of  the  life  of  the  universe.  We  should  be 
concerned  with  what  is  going  on  in  Europe, 
though  no  Lusitania  had  been  sunk.  In  some 
form  or  other  we  shall  be  obliged  to  co-operate 
with  the  other  peoples  of  Christendom  for  the 
accomplishment  of  certain  things  necessary  for 
our  life  in  common.  The  question  for  America 
is  whether  she  shall  co-operate  blunderingly, 
rendering  still  more  remote  what  she  and  civilisa- 
tion as  a  whole  desires  to  achieve;  or  co-operate 
to  good  purpose. 

What  this  chapter  considers  therefore  is 
whether  in  the  light  of  known  experience  the  fact 
of  joining  in  the  military  operations  of  the  Allies 
against  the  central  powers  will  achieve  for 
America  the  ends  that  she  has  set  before  herself. 
It  deliberately  disregards  all  considerations  as 
to  the  ethics  of  war,  its  cost  or  cruelty  or  justi- 
fiability. It  assumes  that  the  accomplishment  of 
the  ends  in  view — which  so  far  as  America  is 
concerned  are  mainly  moral  ends — would  consti- 
tute its  justification. 

I  have  used  the  phrase  "joining  in  the  military 
operations  of  the  Allies"  instead  of  the  word 
"war"  in  the  preceding  paragraph  because  my 
final  object  in  these  notes  will  be  to  show  that  a 
state  of  war  need  not  include  military  operations ; 
that  American  statesmanship  can,  if  it  frees  itself 


34  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

from  the  shackles  of  old  conceptions  that  belong 
to  what  may  be  termed  the  classic  statecraft, 
give  a  larger  meaning  to  the  term  "war"  and  can 
employ  methods  of  enforcing  a  general  right  or 
an  international  rule  that  are  more  effective  than 
the  military  method. 

This  present  chapter  will  consider  the  effective- 
ness of  the  old  kind  of  war  in  the  present  circum- 
stances. A  later  one  will  describe  and  examine 
the  possibilities  of  the  new. 

It  is  particularly  important  to  realise  just  how 
far  America  can  achieve  her  present  ends  in  the 
old  way,  by  conventional  military  methods,  that  is, 
because  the  "natural"  course  for  her,  the  course 
which  precedent,  tradition,  established  habit  of 
thought,  deeply  grounded  political  conceptions, 
bureaucratic  inertia,  the  momentum  of  diplomatic 
routine,  all  dictate,  is  military  co-operation  of  the 
old  kind  with  the  Allies.  Only  a  general  realisa- 
tion of  the  ineffectiveness  of  these  means  can 
present  any  check  to  those  forces.  An  American 
Ambassador,  who  happens  also  to  be  a  scholar,  has 
told  us  that  in  no  field  perhaps  are  men  so  much 
slaves  of  the  past  as  in  diplomacy  and  interna- 
tional statecraft.  Whether  in  this  matter  America 
can  give  to  international  politics  a  little  of  that 
imaginativeness  and  inventiveness  which  the 
American  manages  to  apply  to  other  things  will 
depend  upon  the  realisation  of  the  need  for  so 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        35 

doing.  So  long  as  we  believe  the  old  method 
satisfactory  no  new  ones  will  be  found. 

It  is  necessary  to  emphasise  this : 

If  America  does  not  go  to  war  in  the  ordinary 
sense  with  Germany  over  the  sinking  of  the 
"Lusitania"  it  will  not  be,  let  us  hope,  because 
she  takes  lightly  an  act  of  that  kind. 

America's  protest  against  that  act  derives 
its  real  importance  of  course  from  the  fact 
that  if  the  United  States  were  guilty  of  inert 
acquiescence  in  it  she  would  be  sanctioning 
the  establishment  of  a  precedent  which  would 
mark  a  definite  step  backward  in  the  maintenance 
of  certain  fundamental  principles  of  human  rela- 
tionship. America  would  have  a  large  part  of 
the  blame  for  allowing  to  take  place  a  re-barbar- 
isation  of  international  relations  and  for  undoing 
such  small  advance  as  we  have  made  so  slowly 
and  painfully  in  the  past. 

Now  it  will  be  noted  that  there  is  a  suggestive 
difference  in  the  nature  of  what  we  want  and  the 
respective  demands  of  the  Allies.  With  them 
the  goods  can  be  delivered  on  the  spot  at  the  peace 
settlement;  with  us  they  cannot.  The  Allies  are 
demanding  either  the  transfer  of  territory — 
Alsace-Lorraine,  in  the  case  of  France ;  Trentino, 
etc.,  in  the  case  of  Italy;  Constantinople,  say, 
in  the  case  of  Russia,  and  so  on;  or  the  evac- 
uation of  occupied  territory,  like  Belgium  or 


36  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Northern  France,  which  Britain  is  demanding, 
because  she  believes  that  its  permanent  German 
occupation  might  menace  her.  The  execution  of 
these  demands  can  precede  the  signature  of  the 
peace  treaty.  The  execution  of  American  de- 
mands cannot  precede  the  treaty,  for  what 
America  demands  is  the  future  observance  of 
certain  international  rules  mainly  concerned 
with  rights  at  sea.  The  Allies  can  have  their 
respective  satisfactions  on  the  spot.  America 
can  not. 

A  word  or  two  more  is  necessary  as  to  the 
American  issue  in  this  war. 

The  issue  is  in  its  large  conception  the  defense 
of  neutral  right  in  war  time.  Innocent  people 
have  been  ruthlessly  slain  in  a  war  that  did  not 
concern  them.  American  rights  there  represent 
the  general  interest.  But  America  will  fail  alto- 
gether in  the  vindication  of  those  rights,  and  her 
efforts,  military  or  otherwise,  will  be  revealed  as 
a  monstrous  futility,  if  she  emerges  after  the 
war  having  secured  merely  the  assurance  that 
' 'passenger  ships  shall  not  be  sunk  by  sub- 
marines." 

For  to-morrow  we  may  have  an  American  ship 
destroyed  at  sea  by  a  mine  laid  by  one  of  her 
own  allies,  and  by  virtue  of  a  right  that  belongs 
to  international  law,  which  some  of  those  allies 
have  in  the  past  very  strongly  defended.  In  the 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        37 

year  that  followed  the  war  between  Russia  and 
Japan  (both  of  which  countries  would  be  our 
allies)  some  three  hundred  Chinese  ships  were 
destroyed  by  hitting  mines  in  the  Far  Eastern 
seas.  Will  America  tolerate  that  in  future 
wars  the  combatants  may  sow  the  seas  with 
mines?  If  not,  is  not  this  a  question  that  we 
should  settle  with  the  Allies  before  we  join  them  ? 
Otherwise  we  might  go  into  a  war  and  incur 
its  various  risks,  and  then  find  that,  though  we 
had  vindicated  the  immunity  of  Americans  from 
death  by  torpedo,  we  had  left  it  open  for  them 
to  be  blown  up  by  mines.  They  would  be  just 
as  dead! 

Take  another  detail  of  neutral  right  in  which 
we  are  in  a  special  sense  concerned:  A  merchant 
in  America  sells  a  shipload  of  goods  to  a  mer- 
chant in  Sweden,  for  purposes  that  both  of  them 
believe  to  be — and  which  may  be — innocent  and 
neutral.  They  are  loaded  on — say — an  American 
ship.  Both  America  and  Sweden  are  sovereign 
and  independent  states,  at  peace  with  one  an- 
other and  the  whole  world.  Have  their  citizens 
a  right  to  trade  together?  Not  in  the  least,  as 
the  law  stands,  if  a  war  happens  to  be  raging. 
Because  the  belligerent  who  happens  to  be 
momentarily  predominant  at  sea  can  absolutely 
forbid  that  trade  on  grounds  of  which  he,  and 
he  alone,  is  the  judge.  If  his  prize  court  decides 


38 

that,  despite  the  declaration  of  the  American  and 
the  Swedish  citizens,  the  goods  in  question  are 
destined  for  the  enemy,  or  that  they  might  ulti- 
mately by  some  roundabout  process — of  the 
nature  and  likelihood  of  which  the  foreign  court 
is  again  the  sole  judge — find  their  way  to  his 
enemy,  the  transaction  is  not  permitted. 

The  American  ship  may  be  boarded  a  few  miles 
outside  New  York  by  a  foreign  naval  lieutenant, 
who  would  instruct  that,  instead  of  proceeding  to 
Sweden,  it  go  to  some  port  at  the  other  end  of 
Europe.  There  it  may  be  held  up  for  months 
until  the  facts  of  the  case  can  be  examined  and 
passed  upon,  not  by  a  court  representing  either 
America  or  Sweden,  but  composed  solely  of  the 
citizens  of  the  nation  that  has  an  admitted  bias 
against  the  contention  of  the  two  parties  to  the 
transaction. 

In  this  matter  America  stands  for  the  rights 
of  the  nations  of  the  world  on  the  highways 
of  the  world.  As  things  are  now,  the  gravest 
questions  establishing  precedents  of  international 
law  are  not  settled  by  an  international  court 
but  by  a  national  court  of  the  belligerent  that 
has  a  special  interest  in  direct  conflict  with 
neutral  interest,  which  it  should  be  the  office  of 
international  law  to  defend.  These  belligerent 
"rights/'  which  have  won  recognition  mainly  be- 
cause those  they  injured  were  weak  and  power- 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        39 

less,  may,  and  do,  expose  whole  populations  abso- 
lutely innocent  of  unneutrality  to  want  and  ruin.2 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  possession  of  such  powers 
by  a  momentarily  predominant  sea  combatant  en- 
ables him  to  compel  most  other  nations  to  become 
his  allies,  whether  they  will  or  not.  For  so  long 
as  he  has  command  of  the  sea  he  can  use  his 
credit  to  draw  upon  the  resources  of  neutrals 
and  to  prevent  his  enemies  from  so  doing.  We 
may  desire  to  help  England  in  this  war  by  fur- 
nishing her  supplies  and  by  refusing  them  to 
Germany.  But  assume,  for  the  sake  of  argument, 
something  which,  though  it  will  not  happen  in 
this  war,  may  well  happen  in  future  wars:  that 
the  Power  which  starts  with  naval  predominance 
loses  that  predominance  to  its  rival.  Then  you 
are  compelled  to  change  over  your  economic  alli- 
ance. If  such  a  thing  happened  in  this  war  we 
should  have  to  support  Germany  as  we  have  been 
supporting  England.  For  it  would  be  unneutral, 
during  the  course  of  the  war,  to  change  inter- 
national practice  in  respect  to  the  export  of  arms 
and  munition,  or  supplies. 

Now  the  great  danger  for  America  in  this 
matter  of  the  future  sea  law  resides  in  the 
excellence  of  the  Allied  cause  and  in  the  in- 

*The  populations  in  certain  Dutch  and  Scandinavian  ports, 
and  in  many  districts  of  Switzerland,  have  suffered  terribly  in 
this  war. 


40  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

tegrity  of  British  courts.  It  is  because  the 
British  cause  is  good  and  her  courts  are  impar- 
tial that  we  sanction  action  by  Great  Britain 
that  we  could  never  dream  of  sanctioning  in  the 
case  of  the  belligerent  fighting  for  a  bad  cause 
and  possessing  unreliable  courts.  But,  if  we  allow 
present  practice  of  the  Allies  to  become  the  prece- 
dent for  international  law,  we  shall  have  to  accept 
its  operation  when  others  apply  that  law,  even 
though  we  may  believe  the  cause  for  which  they 
are  fighting  to  be  a  bad  or  doubtful  one.  We 
must  accept  it  even  in  the  cause  in  which  we 
do  not  believe,  or  place  ourselves  grievously  in 
the  wrong.  Japan,  for  instance,  at  war  with 
China,  might,  by  virtue  of  rights  that  English 
precedent  establishes,  place  us  in  a  position  in 
which  our  whole  Pacific  trade,  whether  with 
China  or  not,  would  be  under  the  absolute  veto 
of  Japanese  admirals  and  Japanese  prize  courts, 
and  we  might,  by  reason  of  the  very  law  that  we 
had  previously  sanctioned,  become  the  economic 
ally  of  Japan  in  some  war  of  subjugation  that  we 
might  not  approve.  Again,  we  should  be  placed 
in  the  position  either  of  accepting  that  situation 
or  of  making  ourselves  lawbreakers. 

Now,  the  most  strenuous  opponent  of  any  re- 
form in  sea  law  in  that  direction  is  Great  Britain, 
and  very  rightly  so  as  things  stand  internationally, 
and  stood  before  the  war.  Opposition  to  the 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        41 

recognition  of  neutral  right  at  sea  has  been  for 
centuries  her  historic  role.3  From  the  days  when 
her  admirals  claimed  salute  from  the  ships  of  all 
nations,  as  recognition  of  England  as  sovereign 
of  the  seas — and,  parenthetically,  when  British 
admirals  fired  upon  and  destroyed  ships  that 
would  not  give  such  salute — down  through  the 
later  time  of  the  wars  of  armed  neutrality,  she 
has  withstood  firmly  all  attempts  to  hamper 
belligerent  privilege  at  sea.  She  has  always 
claimed  in  justification  that  those  privileges  in 
naval  war  are  vital  to  her  national  life.  I  think 
we  must  concede  that.  In  a  lawless  world  doubt- 
less she  had  been  justified  in  acting  as  she  has 
acted;  but  I  state  the  facts. 

In  the  long  and  weary  conflict  about  rights  at 
sea  America  has  on  the  whole  taken  one  line  and 
England  on  the  whole  the  contrary.  The  conflict 
is  in  reality  little  nearer  to  solution  than  when 
it  led  this  country  into  war  with  England  a 
hundred  years  ago. 

Indeed  as  the  reader  will  have  noted  from  the 
previous  chapter  (and  the  argument  is  later  de- 
veloped) the  present  writer  does  not  believe  it 

"One  must  distinguish  between  intention  in  peace  time  and 
action  in  war.  In  the  various  conferences  on  international  law 
British  representatives  have  often  shown  a  desire  to  recognise 
the  neutral's  position,  but  the  desire  is  generally  overborne 
by  war  needs ;  as  witness  the  fate  of  the  Declaration  of 
London. 


42  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

possible  that  neutral  right  can  be  respected  where 
war  takes  place  on  a  world-wide  scale ;  and  he  ad- 
vances the  thesis  that  the  real  protection  of  such 
interests  as  neutrals  seek  to  protect  in  war  time 
will  come  more  effectively  by  the  abolition  of  the 
doctrine  of  neutrality  as  at  present  conceived. 
But  if  America  is  to  stand  for  the  enlargement 
of  the  present  conception  of  neutrality  she  will 
by  that  fact  be  brought  into  collision  more  with 
England  than  with  any  other  nation.  She  will 
find  herself  supporting,  as  the  President's  note  to 
Germany  forecasts — absurd  as  it  makes  the  situa- 
tion— a  doctrine  which  England  has  always 
resisted  and  Germany  upheld. 

In  any  case  if  the  American  issue — so  much 
obscured  by  the  circumstance  of  the  present  con- 
flict— is  really  to  be  vindicated,  America  must 
get  certain  assurances  from  her  allies  before  she 
joins  them,  since  the  future  conditions  of  neutral 
right  will  depend  more  upon  the  Allies'  future 
action  than  upon  the  mere  defeat  of  Germany. 
This  conclusion  will,  I  know,  be  resisted.  It  will 
be  said  that,  when  the  militarist  menace,  repre- 
sented by  Germany,  is  disposed  of,  and  the  ele- 
ment in  Europe  that  has  been  most  hostile  here- 
tofore to  international  arrangements  removed,  it 
will  not  be  difficult  to  secure  radical  reform  of 
international  law  and  some  assurance  of  its 
future  observance, 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        43 

Now  that  contention  implies  three  things: 
First,  that  the  destruction  of  German  military 
power  can  be  made  permanent  or  relatively  per- 
manent; secondly,  that  the  military  alliance  now 
existing  between  Germany's  enemies  will  also  be 
permanent;  and  thirdly,  that  a  means  of  enforc- 
ing international  law  that  depends  upon  military 
combinations  of  the  great  Powers  will  be  depend- 
able and  efficient. 

None  of  these  assumptions  can  be  accepted. 
The  destruction  of  the  German  state  is  a  mere 
phrase;  nothing  in  history  is  more  mutable  than 
military  alliances  like  those  framed  for  the  prose- 
cution of  this  war,  and  the  very  incidents  that 
have  created  our  issues  with  Germany  are  them- 
selves proof  of  how  inefficient  is  military  and 
naval  power,  even  when  predominant,  for  the 
protection  of  life  and  the  enforcement  of  law. 

To  establish  the  first  point  I  shall  be  compelled 
to  summarise  certain  historical  facts  that  I  have 
dealt  with  elsewhere,  and  to  some  extent  to  quote 
myself. 

What  does  the  "destruction"  of  Germany  mean? 
Certainly  not,  of  course,  the  slaying  of  her  popu- 
lation. Does  it  mean  the  distribution  of  her  ter- 
ritory among  the  victorious  Allies  ?  In  that  case 
you  will  permanently  militarise  every  state  in 
Europe,  because  each  will  be  holding  down  un- 
willing populations  and  creating  military  forces 


44  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

for  that  purpose.  You  will  have  created  not  one 
Alsace-Lorraine — which  by  itself  has  been  so 
fertile  a  cause  among  the  various  causes  of  this 
war — but  you  will  have  created  five,  or  six,  or 
seven  Alsaces;  centers  of  ferment  scattered  over 
the  Continent.  Obviously,  that  way  peace  cannot 
lie,  nor  the  permanence  of  any  arrangement  of 
which  that  way  is  a  part. 

If  it  is  deemed  that  the  mere  destruction  of  the 
German  army  or  navy  would  have  any  permanent 
effect,  Germany  herself  has  supplied  a  dramatic 
answer  within  the  memory  of  fathers  of  men  still 
living.  In  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury Prussia  was  annihilated  as  a  military  power 
— at  Jena  and  Auerstadt.  The  whole  country  was 
overrun  by  the  French.  By  the  Peace  of  Tilsit 
she  was  deprived  of  her  territory  west  of  the 
Elbe  and  of  the  larger  part  of  her  Polish  prov- 
inces; of  the  southern  part  of  West  Prussia,  of 
Dantzic,  thus  losing  nearly  a  half  of  her  popu- 
lation and  area;  the  French  Army  remained  in 
occupation  until  heavy  contributions  demanded 
by  France  were  paid;  and  by  the  subsequent 
treaty  the  Prussian  Army  was  limited  to  not 
more  than  forty-two  thousand  men,  and  Prussia 
was  forbidden  to  create  a  militia. 

She  was  broken  apparently  so  completely  that 
even  some  five  years  later  she  was  compelled  to 
furnish,  at  Napoleon's  command,  a  contingent 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        45 

for  the  invasion  of  Russia.  The  German  States 
were  weakened  and  divided  by  all  the  statecraft 
that  Napoleon  could  employ.  He  played  upon 
their  mutual  jealousies,  brought  some  of  them 
into  alliance  with  himself,  created  a  buffer  king- 
dom of  Westphalia,  Frenchified  many  of  the 
German  courts,  endowed  them  with  the  Code 
Napoleon.  Germany  seemed  so  shattered  that  she 
was  not  even  a  "geographical  expression."  It 
seemed,  indeed,  as  though  the  very  soul  of  the 
people  had  been  crushed,  and  that  the  moral  re- 
sistance to  the  invader  had  been  stamped  out; 
for,  as  one  writer  has  said,  it  was  the  peculiar 
feature  of  the  Germany  that  Napoleon  overran, 
that  her  greatest  men  were  either  indifferent,  like 
Goethe,  or  else  gave  a  certain  welcome  to  the 
ideas  that  the  French  invaders  represented.  Yet, 
with  this  unpromising  material,  the  workmen  of 
the  German  national  renaissance  labored  to  such 
good  purpose  that,  within  a  little  more  than  five 
years  of  the  humiliation  of  the  Peace  of  Tilsit, 
the  last  French  army  in  Germany  was  destroyed, 
and  it  was  thanks 'to  the  very  condition  imposed 
by  Napoleon — with  the  object  of  limiting  her 
forces4 — that  Prussia  was  able  finally  to  take  the 

4Napolcon  exacted  that  the  Prussian  Army  should  be  limited 
to  forty-two  thousand  men,  but  by  making  it  a  different  forty- 
two  thousand  each  year  there  was  initiated  that  system  of 
national  conscription  which  made  Germany  triumphant  in  1870. 


46  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

major  part  in  the  destruction  of  the  Napoleonic, 
and  in  the  restoration  of  the  German,  Empire. 
It  was  from  the  crushing  of  Prussia  after  Jena 
that  dates  the  revival  of  German  national  con- 
sciousness and  the  desire  for  German  unity,  even 
at  the  cost  of  Prussian  predominance  therein. 

So  with  France  in  1870.  The  German  armies, 
drawn  from  states  that  within  the  memory  of 
men  then  living  had  been  mere  appanages  of 
Napoleon  and  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  furnished 
some  of  the  soldiers  of  his  armies,  had  destroyed 
the  armies  of  Louis  Napoleon.  Not  merely  was 
France  prostrate,  her  territory  in  the  occupation 
of  German  soldiers,  the  French  Empire  over- 
thrown, and  replaced  by  an  unstable  republic,  but 
frightful  civil  conflicts  like  the  Commune  had 
divided  France  against  herself.  So  distraught, 
indeed,  was  she  that  Bismarck  had  almost  to 
create  a  French  government  with  which  to  treat 
at  all.  An  indemnity — at  the  time  immense — 
had  been  imposed  upon  her,  and  it  was  generally 
believed  that  not  for  generations  could  she  again 
become  a  considerable  military  or  political  factor 
in  Europe. 

Her  increase  of  population  was  feeble,  tending 
to  stagnation;  her  political  institutions  were  un- 
stable; she  was  torn  by  internal  dissensions;  and 
yet,  as  we  know,  within  five  years  of  the  conclu- 
sion of  peace  France  had  already  sufficiently 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        47 

recuperated  to  become  a  cause  of  anxiety  to  Bis- 
marck, who  believed  that  the  work  of  "destruc- 
tion" would  have  to  be  begun  all  over  again. 
And  if  one  goes  back  to  earlier  centuries,  to  the 
France  of  Louis  XIV,  and  to  her  recovery  after 
her  defeat  in  the  War  of  the  Austrian  Succes- 
sion, to  the  incredible  exhaustion  of  Prussia  in 
wars  like  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  when  her  popu- 
lation was  cut  in  half,  or  to  the  Seven  Years' 
War,  it  is  the  same  story — a  virile  people  cannot 
be  wiped  from  the  map. 

There  are  one  or  two  additional  factors.  The 
marvelous  renaissance  of  France  after  1871  has 
become  a  commonplace ;  and  yet  this  France  that 
is  once  more  challenging  her  old  enemy  is  a 
France  of  stationary  population,  not  having,  be- 
cause not  needing,  the  technical  industrial  capac- 
ity that  marks  certain  other  peoples,  like  ourselves 
and  the  Germans.  The  German  population  is 
not  stationary ;  it  is  increasing  at  the  rate  of  very 
nearly  a  million  a  year;  and  if  the  result  of  this 
war  is  to  attenuate  some  of  the  luxury  and 
materialism  that  have  marked  modern  Germany, 
the  rate  of  population  increase  will  not  be  di- 
minished but  rather  be  accelerated,  for  it  is  the 
people  of  simple  life  that  are  the  people  of  large 
families. 

It  is  altogether  likely  that  the  highly  artificial 
Austrian  Empire — itself  the  work  of  the  sword, 


48  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

not  the  product  of  natural  growth — embracing 
so  many  different  races  and  nationalities,  will  be 
politically  rearranged.  This  will  result  in  giving 
German  Austria  an  identity  of  aim  and  aspiration 
with  the  other  German  States,  so  that — however 
the  frontiers  may  be  rectified  and  whatever  shuf- 
fling may  take  place — this  solid  fact  will  remain : 
in  Central  Europe  a  body  of  seventy-five  or 
eighty  millions  speaking  German  and  nursing, 
if  their  nationality  is  temporarily  overpowered, 
the  dream  of  reviving  it  when  the  opportunity 
shall  occur. 

I  have  said  that  the  annihilation  of  Germany  is 
a  meaningless  phrase.  You  cannot  annihilate 
sixty-five  or  seventy-five  million  people.  You 
cannot  divide  them  up  between  France  and 
Russia,  save  at  the  cost  of  making  those  two 
states  highly  militarised,  undemocratic  and  op- 
pressive Powers.  If  you  break  up  those  seventy- 
five  millions  into  separate  states,  there  is  no 
reason  why,  if  a  Balkan  league  could  be  formed 
— as  it  was  formed  a  year  or  two  since — to  fight 
successfully,  a  German  league  could  not  do 
likewise. 

And  that  brings  me  to  the  second  point:  That 
the  military  and  diplomatic  combinations,  by 
which  the  German  states  of  the  future  are  to  be 
kept  in  subjugation,  cannot  be  counted  upon  for 
permanence  and  stability.  Such  combinations 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        49 

never  have  been  and,  in  their  nature,  cannot  be 
permanent  or  immutable. 

This  impermanence  and  mutability  is  inherent 
in  their  nature  and  would  inevitably  be  revealed  if 
there  was  a  distribution  of  conquered  territory 
among  the  victors.  They  would  then  be  attempt- 
ing to  cure  the  evils  of  conquest  and  military 
domination  by  themselves  becoming  conquerors, 
by  expanding  their  military  domination,  by 
creating  all  the  machinery  to  effect  those  pur- 
poses— including  the  moral  or  immoral  qualities 
necessary  thereto — and  by  fostering  the  kind  of 
patriotism  and  national  pride  that  go  therewith. 
It  would  then  be  open  for  two  countries  to  give 
satisfaction  to  the  political  passions  so  aroused 
by  despoiling  a  third.  For,  as  Talleyrand  most 
wisely  said,  "There  are  few  things  upon  which 
two  persons  will  so  readily  agree  as  the  robbery 
of  a  third."  Let  us  look  at  quite  recent  history, 
which  happens  to  be  particularly  suggestive  in 
this  connection. 

The  first  Balkan  War  was  won  by  a  group  of 
separate  states,  not  linked  by  any  formal  political 
bond  but  thrown  together  by  one  common  fear, 
resentment,  or  ambition — the  desire  to  wrest 
members  of  their  race  from  Turkish  tyranny. 
To  the  general  astonishment  this  combination 
held  together  with  extraordinary  success  for  the 
purposes  of  war.  But  immediately  the  military 


50  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

success  was  achieved,  dissensions  arose  among 
the  allies  over  the  division  of  the  spoils.  And  the 
first  Balkan  War  was  succeeded  by  a  second 
Balkan  War  in  which  the  members  of  the  league 
fought  one  another,  and  the  final  settlement  is 
not  yet. 

Now  just  take  the  Allies  in  the  present  war. 
A  year  ago  Italy  was  in  formal  alliance  with  the 
Powers  that  she  is  now  fighting.  Japan,  a  decade 
since,  was  fighting  with  a  Power  of  which  she  is 
now  the  ally.  The  position  of  Russia  shows 
neverending  changes.  In  the  struggles  of  the 
eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  centuries  Eng- 
land was  always  on  the  side  of  Russia;  then 
after  two  generations  Englishmen  were  taught 
to  believe  that  any  increase  in  the  power  of  Russia 
was  absolutely  fatal  to  the  continued  existence  of 
the  British  Empire — that  statement  was  made  by 
a  British  publicist  less  than  ten  years  ago. 
Britain  is  now  fighting  to  increase,  both  rela- 
tively and  absolutely,  the  power  of  a  country 
which,  in  her  last  war  upon  the  Continent,  she 
fought  to  check.  In  the  war  before  that  one, 
also  fought  upon  the  Continent,  England  was  in 
alliance  with  Germany  against  France.  As  to 
the  Austrians,  whom  England  is  now  fighting, 
they  were  for  many  years  her  faithful  allies.  So 
it  is  very  nearly  the  truth  to  say  of  all  the  com- 
batants respectively  that  they  have  no  enemy  to- 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        51 

day  who  was  not,  historically  speaking,  quite 
recently  an  ally,  and  not  an  ally  to-day  who  was 
not  in  the  recent  past  an  enemy. 

However,  it  may  be  said  that  Europe  did  at 
least  deal  successfully  with  the  French  military 
menace  that  arose  at  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  that  the  problem  of  France 
in  1815 — successfully  dealt  with  by  Europe — 
resembles  in  its  essentials  the  problem  of  Ger- 
many, with  which  Europe  has  now  to  deal  a 
hundred  years  later.  To  which  it  is  unhappily 
necessary  to  reply  that  the  German  problem  of 
1915  does  not  resemble  the  French  problem  of 
1815,  and  that  Europe  did  not  successfully  settle 
this  latter  problem  a  hundred  years  ago. 

First,  as  to  the  difference  between  the  two 
cases.  What  the  Allies  were  trying  to  do  in  1815 
and  did — very  temporarily — was  to  restore  to 
France  the  old  government  that  had  been 
usurped  by  a  non-French  soldier — for  Napoleon 
was  not  a  Frenchman.  The  Allies  of  that  day 
were,  in  fact,  in  alliance  with  the  legitimate  ruler 
of  France,  and  were  supported  by  a  powerful 
French  party  and  by  entire  French  provinces. 

The  Allies  of  our  day,  should  they  come  to 
their  Vienna  Congress,  will  not  be  dealing  with 
a  usurper  alien  to  the  German  people,  nor  one 
that  is  opposed  by  Germans,  as  Napoleon  was 
opposed  by  certain  of  the  French.  There  are  no 


52  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

powerful  and  influential  German  classes  in  exile 
and  at  home,  ready  to  restore  a  government 
desired  by  the  Allies.  The  historic  government 
of  Germany  does  not  happen  to  represent  the 
political  and  dynastic  preferences  of  the  Europe 
that  may  have  the  task  of  reconstructing  the 
German  Empire. 

So  much  for  the  resemblance.  Now  as  to  the 
success  of  Europe,  in  1815,  in  exorcising  the 
Napoleonic  danger.  The  victory  of  the  European 
Allies  of  1815  was  presumed  to  have  restored 
permanently  the  old  French  dynasty  and  to  have 
destroyed  permanently  the  Napoleonic  usurpa- 
tion. Yet,  within  three  decades  of  the  Congress 
of  Vienna,  it  was  the  old  French  dynasty  that 
had  disappeared  and  the  Napoleonic  dynasty  that 
was  once  more  installed.  And  so  little  did  the 
victories  of  the  Allies  exorcise  the  danger  of 
Napoleonic  military  ambitions  that,  within  a 
generation  after  the  death  of  the  first  Napoleon 
another  Napoleon  had  entered  into  alliance  with 
England — the  jailer  of  the  first — and  with  her 
was  busy  fighting  wars  the  result  of  which 
England  and  Europe  are  now  attempting  to  undo 
— fighting,  that  is,  to  keep  Russia  from  the  Darda- 
nelles and  to  "secure  the  permanent  integrity  of 
the  Turkish  Empire"!  For,  while  the  Crimean 
War  was  fought  for  the  purpose  of  preventing 
Russia  from  reaching  Constantinople  and  for  for- 


AMERICAN  ACTION  IN  EUROPE        53 

tifying  Turkish  power,  the  present  war  is  being 
fought,  of  course,  among  other  things,  for  the 
purpose  of  achieving  the  exactly  contrary  pur- 
pose. The  grim  humour  of  the  thing  is  complete 
when  we  remember  that  the  very  object  accom- 
plished by  the  last  war  in  which  France  and  Eng- 
land fought  together  is  in  no  small  part  the  cause 
of  the  present  war.  For  the  result  of  the  Crimean 
War  was  to  make  large  Balkan  populations  sub- 
servient to  Turkish  rule,  and  the  present  war 
began  in  an  incident  to  which  the  intrigues  and 
struggles  of  that  situation  gave  rise;  it  was  a 
part  of  the  unrest  which  the  Crimean  War  made 
inevitable. 

It  was  not,  therefore,  the  Allies  of  1815  who 
got  rid  either  of  the  Napoleonic  dynasty  or  of 
the  tradition  and  evil  fermentation  that  it  repre- 
sented. What  finally  liberated  France  and  Europe 
from  the  particular  menace  of  French  imperial- 
ism was  the  German  victory  of  1870. 

The  lesson  of  1815,  of  1870,  and  the  four  or 
five  similar  situations  that  have  preceded  it  in 
Europe  at  intervals  of  a  century  or  so,  is  that  the 
menace  that  the  two  Napoleons  represented  was 
•not  in  a  person,  or  even  in  a  dynasty  but  in  a 
wrong  ideal.  For  modern  Germany  has  pro- 
duced no  Napoleon  though  it  has  produced 
Napoleonism. 

In  all  the  facts  that  I  have  attempted  to  recall 


54  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

to  the  reader's  memory  there  emerges  this  truth : 
That  the  ideas  and  instincts,  the  traditions  and 
temper  that  underlie  war  grow  out  of  the  remedy 
that  is  designed  to  cure  it ;  and  if  history  has  any 
meaning  at  all,  and  like  causes  produce  like  re- 
sults, the  probable  victory  of  the  Allies  will  not 
of  itself  bring  about  a  settlement  in  Europe  any 
more  effective  or  permanent  than  the  settlements 
that  have  preceded  it.  Indeed,  pathetic  as  the 
truth  is,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  a  very  complete 
victory  of  nations  with  great  military  traditions 
behind  them — and  such  nations  form  part  of  the 
combinations  now  fighting  against  the  Teutonic 
Powers — will  set  up  just  those  moral  and  political 
forces  that  victory  has  always  set  up  in  history. 
And  if  America  should  add  fifty  thousand  men — 
or  a  hundred  thousand,  or  five  hundred  thousand 
— to  the  men  already  fighting  in  this  war  she 
would  not  materially  alter  that  fact. 


CHAPTER  III 

AN  ANGLO-SAXON  OR  A  PRUSSIAN 
WORLD? 


What  are  Anglo-Saxon  and  Prussian  ideals?  In 
setting  out  to  destroy  the  one  and  protect  the  other  we 
must  be  able  to  recognise  which  is  which.  Is  Europe 
busy  Prussianising  itself  as  part  of  the  process  of  in- 
creasing its  military  efficiency?  If  military  conflict  is  to 
continue  in  the  world  military  efficiency  will  determine  its 
issue;  and  that  implies  the  requisite  form  of  national 
organisation  and  code  of  morals.  The  highest  price  of 
war  is  the  Prussianisation  of  the  people  who  wage  it,  how- 
ever good  their  cause  may  be.  That  process  is  not  a 
matter  of  race  but  of  doctrine  acting  upon  human  quali- 
ties which  are  latent  in  all  of  us.  Thus  though  the  flag 
may  be  Anglo-Saxon  the  society  of  the  future  will  be 
Prussianised  if  we  have  to  beat  the  Prussian  at  his  own 
game.  Is  there  any  other  way  of  beating  him  ? 


CHAPTER  III 

AN  ANGLO-SAXON  OR  A  PRUSSIAN 
WORLD? 

I  SUPPOSE  we  are  all  quite  sure  that  we  know 
the  difference  between  the  Anglo-Saxon  and 
the  Prussian  ideal  of  life  and  society? 

I  find  on  taking  stock  of  my  own  ideas  on  the 
matter,  that  my  notion  of  the  Prussian  ideal  is  a 
pretty  definite  one.  It  would  have  to  be,  perhaps, 
since  I  have  written  in  disparagement  of  it  and 
argued  against  it  for  very  many  years  now.  But 
I  find  also  in  this  stock-taking  that  I  have  rather 
a  hazy  idea  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  ideal. 

There  is  a  story  that  I  have  just  heard  of  a 
little  girl  whose  father  was  about  to  start  for  a 
lecture,  when  this  conversation  took  place: 

Little  Girl:  What  are  you  going  to  hear 

about  this  evening,  Father? 
Father:  Professor  Brown  is  going  to  tell  us 

about  the  Aspirations  of  the  Slavs. 
Little  Girl:    What   does   Professor   Brown 

know    about    the    Aspirations    of    the 

Slavs  ? 
Father:  Oh,  he  is  a  very  great  authority  on 

the  subject.     He  has  lived  many  years 

in  Russia  and  the  Balkans, 
57 


58  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Little  Girl:  Well,  you  have  lived  many  years 
in  America.  What  are  the  Aspirations 
of  the  Americans  ? 

Yes,  indeed,  what  are  the  American  aspira- 
tions and  ideals? 

If  they  would  stand  still  perhaps  I  could  tell 
you.  But  even  in  my  own  life,  not  a  long  one, 
"Anglo-Saxon"  political  and  religious  feeling, 
the  character  of  the  social  life  of  the  mass  in  large 
areas  in  England  and  America,  the  external  ex- 
pression of  its  religious  emotion,  its  forms  of  inter- 
course even,  have  ebbed  and  flowed  like  the  tides 
and  changed  in  colour  like  the  sky  at  sunset. 
Undoubtedly,  for  instance,  there  took  place 
during  the  Boer  War,  in  England,  a  Prussianisa- 
tion  of  English  thought  and  feeling  which  had 
nothing  to  do  with  German  influence.  It  was 
connected  with  the  need  for  suppressing  the 
Dutch  Republics  in  South  Africa.  But  the 
tendency  received  a  check.  The  Pro-Boer  agita- 
tion, though  it  did  not  stop  the  Boer  War,  pro- 
duced a  reaction  against  the  Prussian  temper  so 
great  on  one  side  of  English  politics,  that  that 
side,  electorally  triumphant,  virtually  restored  to 
the  Republics  their  independence  under  the  guise 
of  responsible  colonial  government. 

And  one  of  the  minor  difficulties  of  deciding 
just  what  are  the  aspirations  of  the  English  is 
that  when  one  takes  an  aspiring  achievement  like 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?          59 

that  and  says:  "There  is  Anglo-Saxondom ;  that 
is  what  England  is  now  fighting  to  maintain," 
one  is  met  by  the  fact  that  the  noted  anti-Germans 
of  English  politics — or,  if  you  will,  those  most 
alive  to  the  German  danger  during  the  last  ten 
years — are  precisely  those  who  violently  assailed 
the  Pro-Boers  and  the  Liberals  for  doing  what 
they  did  in  South  Africa ;  who  declared  that  this 
surrender  to  the  Boers  was  not  Anglo-Saxon  in 
its  character  at  all,  but  very  anti-English;  and 
that  real  statesmanship  demanded  "severe"  treat- 
ment of  the  conquered  Republics — a  method  of 
government  which  in  its  general  principles  would 
have  resembled  that  employed  by  Germany  in 
Poland  and  Alsace.  Moreover,  the  ideas  of  these 
Prussian-like  Englishmen  with  reference  to  the 
government  of  the  Boers  were  not  an  isolated 
manifestation:  one  saw  the  same  general  feeling 
in  their  attitude  towards  Ireland,  India,  Parlia- 
mentary government,  Imperial  centralisation, 
conscription,  and  a  host  of  other  questions.  Tak- 
ing the  commonly  accepted  definition  of  "Prussian 
ideals,"  one  may  say  that  many  Englishmen  now 
most  marked  by  their  antipathy  to  Germany,  and 
who  to-day,  in  some  instances,  are  giving  evidence 
of  their  sincerity  by  preparing  to  lay  down  their 
lives  to  resist  Prussian  influence  in  the  world, 
are  precisely  those  who  have  stood,  and  will  pre- 
sumably stand  in  the  future,  for  Prussian  methods 


60  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

in  government  and  politics  and  national  organisa- 
tion; for  Prussian  conceptions  in  thought  and 
morals.  And  their  influence,  since  the  war,  has 
become  very  much  greater  than  it  was  before. 
And  yet  they  would  be  described  as  "typical 
Englishmen" ;  are  themselves  quite  sure  that  they 
stand  for  English  ideals. 

And  when  we  get  beneath  the  surface  of  poli- 
tics to  those  things  by  which  principalities  and 
powers  should  stand  or  fall — the  character  of  the 
daily  life  that  is  lived  under  them — one  finds  the 
English  ideal  still  more  difficult  to  fix,  changing 
still  more  rapidly.  The  later  Victorian  period 
was  pre-eminently  one  we  associate  with  the  tri- 
umph of  English  Liberalism;  it  was  the  golden 
age  of  English  parliamentary  government.  But 
we  now  know  also,  alas,  that  it  was  one  of  the 
darkest  of  Dark  Ages  for  the  great  mass  of  the 
English  people — not,  it  may  be,  for  the  few  hun- 
dred thousand  of  the  middle  and  upper  classes 
who  traded  and  grew  rich,  and  whose  orators 
glowed  in  Parliament,  and  who  managed  to 
secure  something  like  half  the  total  income  of 
the  country,  but  for  the  thirty  million  or  so 
who  had  to  manage  as  best  they  might  on  the 
other  half  of  the  national  income.  We  now 
know  just  what  the  "freedom"  of  those  thirty 
millions  meant  when  translated  into  terms  of 
daily  life:  Children  of  ten  sent  under  ground 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?          61 

to  be  beasts  of  burden,  women  forging  iron 
for  thirty  cents  a  day;  Poorhouse  "brats"  sold 
to  manufacturers  as  "apprentices"  ("three  idiots 
to  count  as  one" ) ;  town  and  country  slums, 
such  as  writers  from  Kingsley  to  Whiting  have 
sketched  for  us;  "picturesque  villagers"  in 
"delightful  cottages"  living  six  in  a  room  and 
supporting  a  family  on  less  than  two  dollars  a 
week,  dependent  even  for  that  upon  the  good  will 
of  the  Squire;  subject  body  and  soul  to  the  oli- 
garchs of  the  Hall  and  Parsonage.  And  even 
where  the  population  was  secure  from  sheer 
starvation  we  know  the  sort  of  spiritual  life  that 
Victorian  English  freedom  meant  for  so  many. 
Writers  like  Mark  Rutherford  have  made  known 
to  us  what  the  Non-Conformity  of  the  lower 
middle  classes  of  the  nineteenth  century  meant; 
that  atmosphere  which  cast  a  blight  upon  the  hap- 
piness of  children ;  that  made  men  and  women  go 
through  life  with  a  ghastly  mask  of  primness, 
restraint,  and  fear,  suppressing  spontaneity, 
laughter,  human  nature;  that  associated  religion 
with  ugliness,  black  coats  and  dreary  Sundays, 
and  a  hard  dry  dogma  of  fierce  vindictiveness 
that  banished  toleration,  ruth  and  kindliness; 
that  made  men  as  stilted  in  their  speech  as  in 
their  souls. 

Oh,  that  was  Anglo-Saxon  freedom  all  right! 
For  when  the  Anglo-Saxon  left  England  to  estab- 


62  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

lish  freedom  in  the  New  England  of  the  west,  it 
was  just  about  that  which  he  first  established.  Just 
think  of  the  life  led  during  two  hundred  years  in 
the  typical  New  England  Puritan  community. 
For  those  who  really  loved  freedom — freedom  to 
speculate,  to  question,  to  bring  their  minds  into 
clash  with  others,  to  let  their  children  develop 
their  varied  impulses,  to  revel  in  nature,  to  be 
sincere,  to  relish  life — the  theological  and  moral 
tyranny  of  the  Puritan  theocracy  was  a  dreadful 
terror  that  pursued  them  from  birth  to  death. 

Well,  the  particular  ideal  which  this  repre- 
sented has  disappeared,  or  is  disappearing.  If 
one  considers,  say,  the  ordinary  college  girl  of 
twenty-five,  in  an  English  or  American  commun- 
ity that  still  bears,  perhaps,  the  Victorian  stamp, 
and  compare  her  "aspirations  and  ideals,"  her 
general  outlook  upon  life,  with  those  of  her 
mother,  we  shall  see  that  the  two  beings  belong 
to  different  worlds.  The  difference  between 
them  is  far  greater  than  that  between  the  girl 
from  the  English  university  and  another  from  a 
German.  Yet  the  mother  and  daughter  are  both 
Anglo-Saxon,  and  are  supposed  to  stand  in  com- 
mon for  some  common  ideal  as  against  that  of 
the  foreigner.  That  is  just  one  difficulty  in  fixing 
very  exactly  what  are  the  Anglo-Saxon  ideals. 

Here  is  another. 

That  Victorian  England  I  have   referred  to 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         63 

has  been  transformed  in  at  least  several  outstand- 
ing features.  The  laissez-faire  of  the  nineteenth 
century  economists,  has  given  place  to  a  sense 
of  social  responsibility  on  the  part  of  the  govern- 
ing order  that  has  made  a  beginning,  at  least, 
with  the  abolition  of  the  dreadful  squalor  of  the 
older  industrial  centres,  and  the  creation  instead 
of  garden  cities,  properly  planned  towns.  The 
chance  and  hazards  of  wage  earning  have  been 
eased  for  millions  by  such  devices  as  Old-Age 
Pensions  and  Insurance  Acts.  The  Puritan  terror, 
with  its  dogmatic  cruelties,  has  been  eased  at 
least  by  a  broader  interpretation  both  of  docu- 
ments and  of  dogma.  Best  of  all,  perhaps,  our 
attitude  to  childhood  has  altered.  The  child  has 
now  its  charter;  it  has  certain  rights  to  happi- 
ness; and  we  have  certain  obligations  to  under- 
stand it. 

Now,  these  are  great  changes.  For  millions 
they  have  transformed  the  world.  But  they  are 
not  mainly  Anglo-Saxon  changes,  in  the  sense  of 
arising  from  Anglo-Saxon  national  ideas  as  op- 
posed to  rival  national  ideals,  or  having  had  their 
origins  in  England.  It  is  a  dreadful  thought, 
but  these  four  outstanding  changes  in  the  modern 
life  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  world  have  come  in  very 
large  part  from  Germany. 

The  breaking  down  of  laissez-faire  in  English 
political  economy  and  the  successful  assumption 


64  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

by  the  State  of  certain  social  responsibilities  and 
obligations,  came  straight  from  Germany,  both 
as  to  theory  and  to  practice. 

Town  Planning,  the  Insurance  Acts,  the  Old- 
Age  Pensions  are  German  devices  copied  quite 
frankly  even  in  their  details  from  German  models. 

And  that  wider  interpretation  of  Christian 
documents  and  dogma  which  played  so  large  a 
part  in  breaking  down  the  more  grievous  forms 
of  the  moral  tyranny  of  English  Protestantism, 
in  drawing  the  claws  of  English  Puritanism — 
that  came  largely  from  Germany,  too.  Perhaps 
but  for  the  work  of  modern  German  biblical 
criticism  the  Protestantism  of  millions  of  English 
toilers  would  still  be  just  an  invisible  terror  added 
to  all  the  visible  terrors  of  life;  a  narrow  creed 
would  still  be  the  instrument  of  a  daily  social 
and  intellectual  tyranny,  wielded  by  black-coated 
fanatics  stifling  human  feeling  with  fear-inspiring 
texts.  English  and  American  children  would  still 
cry  themselves  to  sleep  with  thoughts  of  the  worm 
that  dieth  not. 

And  this  Charter  of  Childhood  to  which  I 
have  referred,  our  growing  sense  of  obligation 
to  understand  the  child  and  train  him  otherwise 
than  with  a  rod — that  in  large  part  comes  from 
Germany,  too.  Yet  so  quietly  and  naturally  do 
we  place  ourselves  under  Prussian  tyranny  in 
this  as  in  other  things,  that  most  of  us  hardly 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         65 

realise  even  that  "kindergarten"  is  a  German 
word ;  and  a  German  thing. 

You  see  I  am  just  trying  to  get  at  the  reality 
behind  certain  words  that  we  use  so  readily: 
"Rival  ideals  of  Prussian  and  Anglo-Saxon," 
"Anglo-Saxon  freedom,"  "Prussian  tyranny," 
and  so  on.  These  phrases  have  a  meaning,  and 
there  are  great  realities  in  those  meanings.  But 
to-morrow  we  shall  be  called  upon  to  take  definite 
action  with  reference  to  them.  If  we  are  then  as 
vague  as  we  have  been  in  the  past  about  them  we 
shall  not  know  really  what  we  are  doing.  The 
whole  thing  will  be  hazard,  drift,  obedience  to 
indefinite  fears;  and  possibly  we  shall  hit  in  the 
wrong  place  and  fail  to  hit  in  the  right.  We  shall  be 
slaves  of  words  and  so  not  masters  of  our  action. 

And  there  are  just  one  or  two  other  points  we 
might  consider  in  order  to  be  sure  that  we  get  at 
the  realities  that  underlie  the  outside  form  of 
politics. 

Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  has  in  his  "Common  Sense 
About  the  War"  written  at  some  length  on  the 
English  Junker.  In  what  he  had  to  say  there  was, 
curiously  enough,  no  reference  to  the  fact  that  at 
least  some  German  Socialists  do  honestly  believe 
that  English  politics  in  their  internal  realities  as 
apart  from  their  external  forms  are  in  fact  more 
Junker-ridden  than  the  German;  and  still  less 
did  Mr.  Shaw  give  any  comparison  of  that 


66  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

phase  of  English  and  German  political  develop- 
ment which,  in  the  German  opinion  aforesaid, 
supports  this  view.  Such  a  comparison  I  heard 
made  on  the  morrow  of  the  declaration  of 
war  by  an  educated  Prussian  turned  Socialist 
(nothing  less)  who  had  spent  some  years  at  an 
English  university.  He  made  it  in  reply  to  the 
usual  English  contention  that  Germany  stood  for 
Nietzscheanism,  the  philosophy  of  Power,  and 
that  her  defeat  would  involve  the  definite  defeat 
of  European  reaction.  As  against  this  view  my 
Socialist  Prussian  submitted  a  case  which,  in  so 
far  as  it  may  help  us  to  understand  certain  Ger- 
man feeling  on  this  matter — and  later  on  when 
the  time  comes  to  deal  with  it  it  will  be  necessary 
to  understand  it  in  some  degree — may  be  worth 
a  little  consideration.  He  put  it  in  about  these 
terms : 

"This  fight  of  the  democratic  elements  of 
Europe  against  the  philosophy  of  power  was, 
before  the  war,  going  on  all  over  Europe. 
It  was  an  uphill  fight,  but  had  been  steadily 
gaining  ground  in  Germany,  and  losing 
ground  in  England.  In  Germany,  Junker- 
dom  was  a  threatened  institution,  in  ob- 
vious danger ;  in  England  it  was  not  threat- 
ened at  all,  but  successfully  masked  behind 
the  forms  of  freedom.  In  England,  Parlia- 
mentary government  had  become  a  brilliant 
sham,  an  entertaining  historical  masquerade 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         67 

of  political  processes  and  methods  that  once 
represented  a  means  of  checking  power,  but 
by  a  subtle  transformation  have  since  come 
to  mean  a  method  of  preserving  power  in 
the  hands  of  a  small  clique.  A  landless 
peasantry,  an  endowed  and  established 
church,  the  open  sale  of  the  seats  of  its 
Senate,  the  growth  of  the  caucus,  the  stiffen- 
ing of  the  methods  of  the  party  system,  the 
secrecy  of  its  funds,  the  shaving  down  of 
the  privileges  of  the  private  member,  the 
political  inefficiency  of  labour  representation, 
the  increase  of  power  in  the  Executive,  the 
creation  of  a  Cabinet  within  the  Cabinet  act- 
ing in  secret,  all  diplomatic  work  confined  to 
one  small  social  class,  the  growth  of  the 
power  of  a  plutocratically  owned  press 
within  the  hands  of  two  or  three  individuals 
had  practically  placed  the  government  of 
England,  especially  in  such  issues  as  war 
and  peace,  within  the  absolute  control  of  ten 
or  fifteen  men.  In  the  things  that  matter, 
the  power  of  this  little  Junta — a  form  of 
control,  a  power  frightfully  difficult  to  fight 
because  so  elusive,  much  more  difficult  to 
grapple  with  than  the  definite  and  public  posi- 
tion of  the  bureaucracy  of  Germany — was  far 
in  excess  of  that  of  the  Junker  party  in  Ger- 
many which  for  some  years  had  been  fight- 
ing a  losing  battle,  retaining  merely  rights 
which  appealed  most  to  its  militarist  sense  of 
dignity,  the  right  to  push  ladies  off  the  pave- 
ment and  cut  open  the  heads  of  unarmed 
cripples,  But  it  was  so  obviously  threatened 


68  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

an  institution  (which  English  Junkerdom 
obviously  was  not),  that  for  twenty  years 
the  Prussian  had  been  steadily  yielding  very 
nearly  all  the  points  in  the  policy  of  the  party 
that  opposed  him.  The  Social  Democrat 
Party  had  got  so  much  farther  with  its  pro- 
gramme than  had  the  corresponding  party 
in  England  that  the  latter's  most  daring 
social  experiments  were  but  clumsy  imita- 
tions of  it.  The  swaggering,  but  not  very 
rich  nor  powerful  Junkerdom,  had  become 
cordially  detested  by  the  proletariat  of  the 
whole  of  the  Empire,  and  in  all  the  southern 
half  of  it  by  the  bourgeoisie,  the  intellectuals, 
and  the  aristocracy  as  well.  Its  position  was 
definitely  threatened  and  it  could  not  much 
longer  have  resisted  political  developments 
that  would  have  nullified  its  power.  It 
had  shown  neither  the  shrewdness  nor 
the  duplicity  which  enabled  English  Jun- 
kerdom so  to  transform  all  the  machinery 
of  democracy — Parliament,  the  universities, 
the  endowed  schools,  the  church,  the  'free' 
(but  plutocratic)  press — as  to  make  that  ma- 
chinery but  a  means  of  entrenching  its  posi- 
tion of  real  domination  and  control.  This, 
indeed,  has  been  the  story  from  the  time  that 
the  English  country  gentleman  of  the 
eighteenth  century — true  type  of  the  Junker 
though  he,  more  than  any  other,  'made  Eng- 
land what  it  is' — created  somehow  by  his 
Parliamentary  rhetoric  the  general  impres- 
sion that  he  was  dying  on  the  altar  of  popu- 
lar liberties  and  giving  his  life  for  the 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         69 

defence  of  the  nation's  freedom  when,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  he  was  in  reality  busily  en- 
gaged by  his  Enclosure  Acts  in  robbing  the 
English  peasantry  of  their  land,  and  so  of 
their  real  freedom.  During  this  same  period, 
or  a  little  later,  the  Prussian  Junker,  with  no 
democratic  oratory  at  all,  was  engaged  in 
turning  serfs  into  peasant  proprietors;  so 
that  to-day  in  Germany,  in  oppressed  and 
autocratic  Prussia  even,  most  of  the  pea- 
santry own  their  land;  while  in  Britain, 
after  so  many  brilliant  victories  for  polit- 
ical freedom,  the  peasant  has  lost  his  land. 
In  Germany  the  universities  and  higher 
education,  the  ministry  of  the  church,  are 
for  all  alike,  rich  and  poor;  in  England  the 
'public'  schools  (I  don't  need  to  remind  you 
that  Eton  was  established  for  charity  boys), 
the  universities — both  established  for  the 
poor — have  been  annexed  for  the  exclusive 
use  of  the  rich;  and  even  the  ministry  of 
the  national  church  is  the  preserve  of  the 
Junker  class  and  its  proteges.  In  fact, 
the  English  State  is  the  absolute  possession 
of  a  class;  all  that  it  really  accords  to  those 
outside  the  Junker  pale  is  to  choose  between 
two  parties  in  that  class.  Beside  such  real 
efficiency  in  the  maintenance  of  autocracy, 
as  all  this  shows,  I  am  obliged  to  admit 
that  the  Prussian  Junker  is  a  simpleton, 
a  country  bumpkin.  He  should  come  to 
England  to  learn  his  business.  He  knows 
nothing  of  that  astute  manipulation  of  the 
lower  orders  which  obtains  the  plaudits  of 


70  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  very  men  it  robs.  All  that  this  yokel 
of  a  Prussian  can  do  is  to  flourish  his 
sword  and  retain  some  semblance  of  author- 
ity by  retaining  the  military  type  of  organ- 
isation ;  for  this  purpose  he  works  the  danger 
of  Russian  absolutism  for  all  it  is  worth  with 
the  democratic  elements  and  the  danger  of 
British  politico-economic  domination  with 
the  middle  classes,  and  as  the  result  has 
enabled  the  English  Junker  to  use  the  Ger- 
man danger  for  a  similar  political  end  in 
England,  it  comes  about  that  the  democracies 
of  the  two  countries,  instead  of  fighting  to- 
gether the  common  enemy  of  which  they  are 
the  victims,  are  in  every  sense  playing  the 
game  of  that  common  enemy  by  fighting  one 
another. 

"You  don't  believe  that  the  English  upper, 
or  upper-middle,  or  middle-middle  classes 
have  devised  a  plot  to  deprive  the  population 
of  its  property  and  of  any  real  control  in 
the  government  and  destinies  of  his  country  ? 
Neither  do  I;  but  it  is  what  has  happened. 
I  don't  suppose  there  was  a  deliberate  plot 
on  the  part  of  the  militarist  either  in  Eng- 
land or  in  Germany  to  use  the  war  as  a 
means  of  strengthening  one  form  of  society 
as  against  a  rival  form.  None  of  us  knows, 
perhaps,  the  real  nature  of  the  motives  he  is 
obeying.  We  can  no  more  trace  all  the 
operations  of  mind  which  produce  a  given 
result  in  conduct  and  opinion  than  we  can 
follow  with  our  eye  the  passage  of  a  rifle 
bullet  to  its  mark.  Our  instinct  often  tells 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         71 

us  that  our  actions  are  in  tune  with  our 
fundamental  beliefs  when  we  are  quite  un- 
able to  explain  the  harmony,  just  as  the 
child  or  the  unlettered  gypsy  or  negro  can 
detect  false  note  or  rhythm  in  a  song  without 
knowing  that  such  things  as  time,  or  crotch- 
ets and  quavers  exist.  Do  you  suppose  the 
publican  who  is  almost  certain  to  be  a  flam- 
boyant jingo,  or  the  shoemaker  a  burning 
radical,  could  explain  the  connection  between 
beer  and  patriotism  or  shoe  leather  and 
republicanism?  Yet  there  are  quite  definite 
reasons  for  that  connection  or  it  would  not 
work  in  ninety-nine  per  cent  of  cases.  You 
remember  the  'Punch'  butler,  who,  in  order 
properly  to  provide  for  his  master's  clergy- 
men guests,  wanted  to  know  their  ecclesi- 
astical colouring,  because  'the  'Igh  they 
drinks  more  wine,  and  the  Low  they  eats 
more  victuals/  That  butler  showed  a  highly 
developed  gift  for  generalisation.  It  was  so 
correct  that  you  could  almost  write  the  his- 
tory of  the  Reformation  in  its  terms.  But 
he  could  not  have  given  you  a  single  reason 
for  it  or  explained  it  in  any  way. 

"Neither  can  English  Junkerdom  explain 
the  connection  between  belief  in  armaments 
and  disbelief  in  Parliamentary  government, 
or  the  connection  between  the  protection  of 
privilege  at  home  and  the  prosecution  of 
aggression  abroad;  or  what  a  liking  for  the 
House  of  Lords  has  got  to  do  with  a  dislike 
of  foreigners,  or  why  a  man  who  feels  sym- 
pathy for  the  poor  should  feel  an  antipathy 


72  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

to  jingoes.  Yet  the  Junker,  English  and 
German  alike,  knows  perfectly  well  that  these 
apparently  disconnected  things  are  very  inti- 
mately related,  as  he  knows  that  war  and 
international  mistrust  are  the  natural  but- 
tresses of  reaction  and  privilege.  Neither 
the  English  nor  the  Prussian  militarist  has 
concocted  any  plot  against  the  democracy. 
Both  have  followed  a  very  sound  instinct 
which  leads  them  to  fight  democracy  by  the 
same  means.  And  whatever  happens,  which- 
ever side  wins,  Junkerdom  will  come  out  on 
top." 

My  Prussian  was  quite  honest.  One  wonders 
whether  there  is  anything  in  his  case. 

Again  I  am  prompted  to  anticipate,  by  a  word 
of  explanation,  the  reader's  irritation  at  having 
it  presented  at  all. 

Why  should  a  man  who  has  made  up  his  mind, 
as  this  present  writer  happens  to  have  done,  that 
Prussianism  is  a  monstrous  evil  and  threatens  the 
world,  indulge  in  what  appears  at  first  sight  an 
apology  for  Prussianism  ? 

Well,  precisely  because  the  enemy  happens  to 
be  a  very  redoubtable  one,  and  if  we  are  to  van- 
quish him  we  must  understand  him;  his  strong 
points  and  his  weak  ones ;  just  where  he  is  danger- 
ous, and  where  he  is  beneficent.  And  this  duty 
falls  particularly  upon  those,  who,  standing  apart 
for  the  time  being  from  the  present  military 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         73 

struggle,  do  not  have  to  take  part  in  a  process  of 
self-deception  which  is,  perhaps,  a  necessary  part 
of  active  war. 

Is  it  necessary  to  labour  the  point  that  difficult 
and  complex  crises  in  human  affairs,  and  our 
own  relation  to  them,  are  not  likely  to  be  settled 
by  misunderstanding  them,  by  a  blindness  to 
many  of  the  facts  in  them  ?  Is  it  necessary  either, 
to  labour  the  point  that  nations  at  war  will  not, 
perhaps  cannot,  take  the  pains  to  see  and  under- 
stand all  the  facts  ? 

It  is,  of  course,  much  more  easy  and  much  more 
pleasant  to  resort  in  this  matter  to  what  M.  Sorel 
has  called  the  "social  myth":  to  regard  the 
struggle  as  one  of  two  absolutes — all  the  right 
and  good  on  one  side,  all  the  wrong  and  evil  on 
the  other.  The  only  problem  then  left  is  the 
triumph  of  the  good  side  and  the  defeat  of  the 
bad. 

That  particular  myth  certainly  does  achieve  a 
certain  peace  of  soul  in  war  time,  of  which  Dr. 
Jacks,  of  Oxford,1  has  recently  been  writing.  He 
tells  us  that  before  the  war  the  English  nation, 
regarded  from  the  moral  point  of  view,  was  a 
scene  of  "indescribable  confusion;  a  moral  chaos." 
But  there  has  come  to  it  "the  peace  of  mind  that 
comes  to  every  man  who,  after  tossing  about 
among  uncertainties,  finds  at  last  a  mission,  a 

'Editor  of  Hibbert's  Journal. 


74  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

cause  to  which  he  can  devote  himself."  For  this 
reason,  he  says,  the  war  has  actually  made  the 
English  people  happier  than  they  were  before: 
"Brighter,  more  cheerful.  The  Englishman  wor- 
ries less  about  himself.  .  .  .  The  tone  and  sub- 
stance of  conversation  are  better.  .  .  .  There  is 
more  health  in  our  souls  and  perhaps  in  our 
bodies."  And  he  tells  how  the  war  cured  a  friend 
of  insomnia. 

Unhappily  for  all  this  as  a  cure  for  the  evils  of 
our  society,  the  war  will  soon  have  to  come  to  an 
end.  It  can  last  a  year  or  two  at  most ;  and  then, 
with  our  young  men — the  best  and  the  bravest, 
those  in  whom  lay  the  great  hope  of  the  future — 
dead,  while  the  diseased  and  degenerate  remain, 
we  shall  be  faced  by  very  hard  and  difficult  moral 
and  material  problems  that  the  war  itself  has 
created ;  and  in  those  conditions  it  is  unlikely  that 
the  peace  of  mind  and  unity  of  purpose  which  the 
war  has  created  will  last  very  long ;  and  we  shall 
go  back  to  those  divisions  and  conflicts  which 
existed  before. 

Mr.  Graham  Wallas,  to  whom  the  world  owes 
so  great  a  debt  for  his  illuminating  work  in  the 
domain  of  political  and  social  psychology,  has 
made  a  comment  on  Dr.  Jacks'  reflections,  which 
seems  to  me  to  carry  a  very  clear  message  to 
Americans  on  this  subject  at  this  time.  Wallas 
says : 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         75 

Non-combatants,  like  Dr.  Jacks  and  myself,  who  are 
in  the  habit  of  observing  our  own  states  of  mind,  and 
can  therefore  to  some  extent  control  them,  have  to  come 
to  a  deliberate  choice.  If  I  too  am  to  make  a  personal 
confession,  I  may  say  that  I  believe  that  the  war  was 
mainly  the  result  of  German  and  Austrian  aggression, 
that  I  intensely  desire  victory  for  the  Allies,  and  that  a 
decisive  victory  for  the  German  governing  caste  in  the 
present  temper  would  be,  in  my  view,  a  disaster  to  all  that 
I  most  value  in  civilisation.  I  also  recognise  that  an 
absolute  surrender  of  consciousness  to  the  single  purpose 
of  victory  even  by  non-combatants  has  a  certain  military 
value.  But  although  my  choice  means  that  I  sleep  not 
better  but  worse  in  time  of  war  than  in  time  of  peace,  I 
cannot  myself  make,  or  desire  to  make,  that  surrender, 
because  to  do  so  would  be  to  abandon  as  far  as  I  am  con- 
cerned any  attempt  to  control  by  reasoned  thought  the 
policy  of  my  nation.  I  should  choose  the  unrest  of  thought 
because  I  desire  that  the  war  should  come  to  an  end  the 
instant  its  continuance  ceases  to  be  the  less  of  two  mon- 
strous evils  and  because  I  believe  that  our  national  policy 
should  even  during  .the  fighting  be  guided  not  only  by  the 
will  to  conquer  but  also  by  the  will  to  make  possible  a 
lasting  peace. 

For  the  young  men  who  fight,  it  may  be  best  to 
abandon  the  effort  of  thought,  though  that  fact  consti- 
tutes not  the  least  of  the  evils  of  war;  but  those  who 
are  too  old  to  fight  owe  to  their  nation  the  duty  of  calcu- 
lating all  the  consequences  of  national  policy,  however 
painful  and  uncertain  the  process  of  calculation  may  be. 
It  is  that  which  Bismarck  meant  when  he  insisted  on  the 
supreme  importance  of  controlling,  even  during  a  war, 
military  action  by  political  thought.  Now  that  whole 
nations  with  their  parliaments,  and  churches,  and  univer- 


76  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

sities,  and  industries,  are  "mobilised,"  and  the  intellectual 
life  of  Europe  is  put  under  military  censorship,  such  a 
control  is  less  easy  than  in  1870  but  not  less  vitally  im- 
portant, and  it  can  only  be  attained  if  politicians  prefer 
the  struggle  for  truth  to  the  peacefulness  of  self- 
surrender. 

...  I  know  that  there  are  men  in  Germany  who  are 
in  like  case  with  myself.  They  are  in  a  minority,  but  as 
the  war  goes  on,  and  even  more  when  the  war  shows 
signs  of  coming  to  an  end,  their  number  will  increase. 
Should  any  one  of  them  read  this,  I  send  him  greeting, 
and  assure  him  of  my  conviction  that  if  ever  that  imper- 
fect community  of  nations  is  to  be  reconstituted,  of  which 
England  and  Germany  once  formed  part,  there  will  be 
work  for  those  who  during  the  war  have  denied  them- 
selves the  luxury  of  mental  peace.2 

There  is  one  phrase  in  Graham  Wallas'  article 
which  is  particularly  apposite  as  bearing  upon 
the  question  with  which  I  have  headed  this  chap- 
ter: "An  Anglo-Saxon  or  a  Prussian  World?" 
Dr.  Jacks  had  spoken  of  "this  feeling  of  being 
banded  together  which  comes  over  a  great  popu- 
lation in  its  hour  of  trial,"  as  a  very  wonderful 
thing.  "It  produces  a  spirit  of  exhilaration  which 
goes  far  to  offset  the  severity  of  the  trial.  ...  It 
is  comparatively  easy  to  love  one's  neighbour 
when  we  realise  that  he  and  we  are  common 
servants  and  common  sufferers  in  the  same  cause. 
A  deep  breath  of  that  spirit  has  passed  into  the 

*The  New  Republic,  September  u,  1915. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         77 

life  of  England.  No  doubt  the  same  thing  has 
happened  elsewhere."  Now,  with  reference  to 
this,  Mr.  Wallas  points  to  the  evidence  as  showing 
that :  "the  state  of  mind  which  Dr.  Jacks  describes 
is  rather  more  general  and  more  continuous  in 
Germany  than  in  England.  Among  the  French 
and  Belgian  non-combatants  whom  I  know  it 
seems  to  be  a  good  deal  less  general." 

I  think  we  must  admit  that  this  national  unity 
is  more  general  in  Germany  than  in  the  Western 
democracies  of  Europe.  It  was  more  general 
before  the  war.  Indeed,  Dr.  Jacks  has  been 
describing  a  very  subtle  part  of  the  process  of 
Prussianisation  of  the  English  people:  the  fact 
that  because  a  given  purpose  happens  to  be  the 
nation's  purpose,  that  of  itself  tends  to  close  all 
discussion  as  to  its  Tightness  or  wrongness, 
utility  or  uselessness;  or  to  the  degree  to  which 
it  attains  to  those  things.  On  behalf  of  a  national 
purpose  the  English,  as  Wallas  implies,  surrender 
the  effort  of  thought  except  within  the  limits  of 
that  particular  purpose. 

Now  it  is  unhappily  precisely  such  a  process 
which  in  the  case  of  Germany  has  made  the  man- 
ifestations of  Prussianism — Louvain  and  the 
Lusitania — possible.  Where  criticism  of  national 
action  is  abandoned  for  fear  of  producing 
division  within  the  nation,  the  capacity  for 
any  real  judgment  is  inhibited.  And  thus  it 


78  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

comes  that  a  nation  of  scientists  and  thinkers, 
men  who  have  contributed  abundantly  to  every 
phase  of  the  highest  human  activities,  can  look 
upon  the  massacre  of  Belgian  civilians  and  call 
it  good. 

To  such  a  process  Anglo-Saxon  communities 
have  been  in  the  past,  on  the  whole,  rebellious. 
These  divisions,  and  conflicts  of  ideals,  to  which 
Dr.  Jacks  refers  as  moral  chaos,  are  of  the  essence 
of  Anglo-Saxondom.  If  any  generalisation,  as 
to  the  real  difference  between  the  Prussian  and 
Anglo-Saxon  type  of  society  is  possible  at  all, 
it  is  perhaps  this :  for  the  Anglo-Saxon  the  state 
was  made  for  man;  for  the  German,  man  was 
made  for  the  state.  The  first  conception  neces- 
sarily involves  real  divisions  of  belief  and  feel- 
ing, discussion,  self-criticism,  government  as 
a  controversial  task.  The  German  type,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  been  marked,  not  merely  by 
physical  submission  to  authoritatively  imposed 
discipline,  but  moral  submission  to  the  aim  of  the 
state.  Individual  development  and  personal 
freedom  have  been  more  and  more  subservient 
to  the  needs  of  collective  organisation  and  state 
discipline. 

Now,  whatever  defects  this  last  form  of  society 
may  embody,  it  is  obviously  better  suited  to  the 
needs  of  war  than  the  first.  The  Anglo-Saxon 
type,  with  its  necessary  divisions,  that  clash  of 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         79 

varying  opinion  which  Parliamentary  govern- 
ment not  merely  tolerates  but  needs,  gives  a 
national  instrument  by  no  means  well  adapted  to 
the  purposes  of  the  military  commander. 

And  the  question  whether  European  society  is 
to  take  more  and  more  of  the  Prussian  and  less  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  qualities  will  depend  simply 
upon  whether  its  main  need  is  to  be  that  of  mili- 
tary efficiency.  If  survival  in  the  struggle  of 
the  various  communities  of  Europe  with  one 
another  depends  upon  the  element  of  military 
efficiency  there  will  be  a  progressive  tendency  to 
Prussianisation  and  away  from  that  type  which 
we  have  called  Anglo-Saxon.  Whether  Euro- 
pean culture  can  escape  Prussianisation  will  de- 
pend upon  whether  European  peoples  can  find 
some  means  of  fighting  out  their  differences  other 
than  as  soldiers;  are  able  to  resist  militarism 
other  than  with  more  militarism.  So  long  as 
this  last  is  our  only  recourse  the  very  measures 
which  we  take  in  resistance  to  Prussianism  are 
precisely  those  which  will  impose  it  and  its 
morality  upon  us. 

The  future  tendency  will  depend  not  alone  upon 
the  defeat  of  Germany  in  this  war  but  upon 
the  possibility  afterwards  of  finding  some  means 
of  restraint  without  adopting  Germany's  own 
method. 

If  after  the  war  we  pin  our  faith  to  the  military 


8o  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

method,  or  can  find  no  other,  the  Prussian  will 
have  conquered  us  though  not  a  soldier  of  his 
remain. 

The  process,  as  we  know,  has  already  begun  in 
England.  Quite  apart  from  such  definite  mea- 
sures as  Conscription,  now  so  powerfully  sup- 
ported, some  of  the  acutest  and  alertest  minds  are 
asking  whether  the  basic  conceptions  of  English 
political  organisation  have  not  to  be  recast  in 
favour  of  the  Prussian  form  in  order  to  give  a 
better  military  instrument. 

Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  holds  that  "an  immense  note  of 
interrogation  hangs  over  the  theory  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  free  co-operation  can  secure  for  democ- 
racy the  highest  degree  of  efficiency."  Criticising 
some  of  the  conclusions  of  Professor  van  Gennep 
as  to  the  effectiveness  of  that  form  of  national 
organisation  which  has  marked  the  Western 
democracies  of  Europe,  Mr.  Wells  says: 

"There  can  be  little  doubt  which  side  has  achieved 
the  higher  collective  efficiency.  It  is  not  the  Western 
side.  ...  It  is  no  use  denying  that  the  Central  Powers 
were  not  only  better  prepared  for  this  war  at  the 
outset,  but  that  on  the  whole  they  have  met  the  occa- 
sions of  the  war  as  they  have  so  far  arisen  with  much 
more  collective  intelligence,  will  power,  and  energy 
than  any  of  the  Allies,  not  even  excepting  France. 
They  have  succeeded,  not  merely  in  meeting  enormous 
military  requirements  better,  but  in  keeping  the  material 
side  of  their  national  life  steadier  under  greater  stresses. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         81 

It  is  idle  for  this  writer  to  pretend  to  think  that  the 
United  States  would  make  any  better  showing  in  this 
matter  than  Great  Britain.  The  British  Government  has 
been  excellent  in  argument  and  admirable  in  rhetoric, 
but  it  has  been  slack,  indolent,  and  unready  in  all  matters 
of  material  organisation;  it  has  muddled  and  wasted 
national  feeling,  and  it  has  been  manifestly  afraid  of  the 
press  and  over-sensitive  to  public  clamour.  It  has  shown 
all  the  merits  and  failures  one  might  have  expected  from 
a  body  of  political  lawyers,  trained  in  the  arts  of  making 
things  seem  right,  wary  and  prepared  to  wait  and  see 
what  chances  the  adversary  will  give,  and  as  incapable 
of  practical  foresight,  as  remote  from  the  business  of 
making  real  things  go  right,  as  enclosed  nuns.  If  the 
present  governments  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States  are  the  best  sort  of  governments  that  democracy 
can  produce,  then  Professor  Ostwald  is  much  more  right 
than  Professor  van  Gennep  is  prepared  to  confess,  and 
democracy  is  bound,  if  not  this  time,  then  next  time  or 
the  time  after,  to  be  completely  overcome  and  superseded 
by  some  form  of  authoritative  State  organisation."  3 

Now  the  most  significant  thing  about  this  is  the 
complete  change  of  attitude  toward  German  cul- 
ture, which  it  involves.  I  said  just  now  that  the 
competition  for  military  efficiency  in  Europe  will 
compel  its  democracies  to  adopt  the  very  morality 
which  it  was  the  original  object  of  their  effort  to 
fight.  Mr.  Wells  is  merely  illustrating  one  phase 
of  that  transposition;  the  process  that  is  going 
on  in  the  minds  of  the  nation  as  a  whole,  though 

*The  Nation  (London)  July  24,  1915. 


82  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

more  slowly  than  in  his  very  acute  and  alert  one. 
He  justified  this  war  at  the  beginning  because 
it  was  a  crusade  to  destroy  the  German  concep- 
tion of  human  society.  He  now  tells  us  that  we 
have  to  adopt  that  conception.  Just  after  the 
war  began  he  wrote: 

This  is  a  conflict  of  cultures  and  nothing  else  in  the 
world.  All  the  worldwide  pain  and  weariness,  fear  and 
anxieties,  the  bloodshed  and  destruction,  the  innumerable 
torn  bodies  of  men  and  horses,  the  stench  of  putrefac- 
tion, the  misery  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  human  beings, 
the  waste  of  mankind  are  but  the  material  consequences 
of  a  false  philosophy  and  foolish  thinking.  We  fight  not 
to  destroy  a  nation,  but  a  nest  of  foolish  ideas.  .  .  .  The 
real  task  of  mankind  is  to  get  better  sense  into  the  heads 
of  these  Germans.4 

He  now  tells  us  that  the  task  is  to  get  better 
sense  into  our  own;  and,  instead  of  destroying 
their  ideas,  to  adopt  them. 

I  am  aware,  of  course,  that  he  distinguished 
between  the  Germany  of  Bernhardi  and  the  Ger- 
many of  Ostwald.  But  does  not  even  Ostwald 
accept  a  moral  docility  for  the  sake  of  discipline 
which  alone  makes  the  Germany  of  Bernhardi — 
and  it  is  that  Germany  which  violated  Belgium 
and  sank  the  Lusitania — possible? 

It  is  quite  possible  to  watch  the  process  at 

*The  Nation  (London),  Aug.  29,  1914. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         83 

work,  to  note  the  change  that  is  taking  place  in 
the  public  temper,  and  the  general  attitude  toward 
Prussianism. 

Anyone  reading  an  English  paper  at  the  out- 
break of  the  war — and  in  the  case  of  some  of 
them  for  months  and  years  before  the  war — would 
have  found  that  European  civilisation  was 
threatened  by  a  new  and  dangerous  barbarism, 
a  dreadful  and  immoral  tyranny,  in  resistance  to 
which  the  last  drop  of  blood  of  a  free  people 
should  be  shed.  Certain  eminent  Englishmen, 
like  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  and  Frenchmen,  like 
M.  Flammarion,  professed  to  find  that  this  con- 
flict between  Prussia  and  Europe  had  been  going 
on  for  two  thousand  years.  These  two,  between 
them,  manage  to  quote  Velleius  Paterculus,  Julius 
Csesar,  Tacitus,  Seneca,  Strabo,  and  Froissart  to 
prove  that  the  conflict  we  now  witness  between 
barbarism  on  the  one  hand,  and  civilisation  on 
the  other,  is  merely  the  continuation  of  the  irre- 
pressible conflict  that  has  been  raging  for  two 
thousand  years.  Mr.  Harrison  quotes  Tacitus  to 
prove  that  German  courage  is  not  real  courage, 
and  M.  Flammarion  Velleius  Paterculus  to  prove 
that  the  "German  character"  has  always  been  "in 
its  very  nature  a  companion  of  ferocity,  falsehood 
and  servility."  5 

'From  an  address  delivered  to  the  Assemblee  generate  de  la 
Societe  astronomique  de  France. 


84  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

An  English  Liberal  publicist,  Mr.  A.  G.  Gard- 
iner, at  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  writes : 

As  this  great  tragedy  proceeds  it  becomes  increas- 
ingly clear  that  the  issue  that  is  being  fought  at  this 
moment  in  the  trenches  of  the  Aisne  is  not  this  or  that 
national  gain  or  loss  but  the  spiritual  governance  of  the 
world.  Someone — I  think  it  was  Sir  Robertson  Nicoll — 
has  expressed  it  in  the  phrase,  "Corsica  or  Calvary."  I 
think  that  is  more  true  than  picturesque  phrases  ordi- 
narily are,  for  the  cause  for  which  the  Allies  fight  is  more 
vast  than  any  material  motive  that  inspires  them.  They 
are  the  instruments  of  something  greater  than  themselves. 

If  the  phrase  is  unjust,  it  is  unjust  to  Corsica,  for 
behind  the  militarism  of  Napoleon  there  was  a  certain 
human  and  even  democratic  fervour;  but  behind  the 
gospel  of  the  Kaiser  there  is  nothing  but  the  death  of 
the  free  human  spirit.  ...  If  he  were  to  triumph  the 
world  would  have  plunged  back  into  barbarism.  .  .  . 
We  stand  for  the  spirit  of  light  against  the  spirit  of 
darkness.6 

And  now  Mr.  Wells  and  others  tell  us  that  this 
people  of  anti-Christs,  whose  national  system  of 
morals  and  organisation  threaten  humanity,  are 
the  people  who  have  found  and  developed  at  least 
in  large  degree  the  true  method  of  civilisation, 
and  that  the  world  must  follow  their  lead. 

An  exactly  similar  transformation  of  attitude 
is  true  with  reference  to  the  political  objects  which 
the  war  was  to  accomplish,  the  policy  which  is 

'Daily  News  (London),  Sept.  28,  1914. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         85 

supposed  to  have  inspired  it — and  the  British 
attitude  towards  militarism  generally. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  we  find  even  the 
Conservative  press,  as  exemplified  in  the  Times, 
declaring  that  the  war  was  "a  war  against  war." 
It  arose  from 

".  .  .  That  love  of  peace,  and  of  arbitration  as  means 
of  peace,  which  is  amongst  the  highest  and  most  cher- 
ished ideals  of  the  British  democracy  at  home  and  in 
the  Dominions.  That  is  one  of  the  ideals  which  the 
militarism  of  the  German  Junker  class  regards  with 
hatred  and  scorn.  General  von  Bernhardi,  as  a  corres- 
pondent showed  the  other*  day,  pours  contempt  and 
derision  upon  British  and  American  devotion  to  it  as  a 
sign  of  our  common  decadence.  But  the  two  democ- 
racies see  in  it  the  bright  promise  of  the  future."  7 

Mr.  Asquith  was  just  as  positive.  The  war 
meant,  he  said, 

".  .  .  first  and  foremost  the  clearing  of  the  ground 
by  the  definite  repudiation  of  militarism  as  the  govern- 
ing factor  in  the  relations  of  States  and  of  the  future 
moulding  of  the  European  world.  ...  It  means  finally, 
or  ought  to  mean,  perhaps  by  a  slow  and  gradual  process, 
the  substitution  for  force,  for  the  clash  of  competing 
ambitions,  for  groupings  and  alliances,  and  a  precarious 
equipoise,  of  a  real  European  partnership,  based  on  the 
recognition  of  equal  right  and  established  and  enforced 
by  the  common  will."  8 

'Aug.  10,  1914. 

"At  Dublin,  Sept.  25,  1915. 


86  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Some  months  later  (March  8)  we  find  the 
Times,  as  embodying  British  governmental 
opinion,  proclaiming: 

".  .  .  we  do  not  set  up  to  be  international  Don  Quix- 
otes, ready  at  all  times  to  redress  wrongs  which  do  us 
no  hurt.  .  .  .  We  joined  the  Triple  Entente  because  we 
realised,  however  late  in  the  day,  that  the  time  of  'splendid 
isolation'  was  no  more.  We  reverted  to  our  historic 
policy  of  the  balance  of  power,  and  we  reverted  to  it  for 
the  reasons  for  which  our  forefathers  adopted  it.  They 
were  not,  either  for  them  or  for  us,  reasons  of  sentiment. 
They  were  self-regarding,  and  even  selfish,  reasons.  .  .  . 
In  the  event  of  war  we  saw,  as  our  fathers  had  seen,  Eng- 
land's first  line  of  attack  and  of  defence  in  her  Continental 
Alliances." 

Anyone  who  had  argued  this  in  August  or 
September  would  have  come  near  to  being 
lynched. 

And,  at  about  the  same  time,  we  find  the  Morn- 
ing Post,  an  influential  Conservative  paper,  repre- 
senting a  very  large  class  in  the  governing  order, 
rejoicing  as  follows: 

"The  absurd  talk  about  this  being  a  war  against 
militarism  has  now  subsided;  the  British  people  see  that 
only  by  the  intelligent  use  of  military  power  can  they 
hope  to  defeat  their  arrogant  and  overweening  neighbour. 
After  all,  the  British  Empire  is  built  up  on  good  fighting 
by  its  army  and  its  navy;  the  spirit  of  war  is  native  to 
the  British  race,  and  as  we  have  an  excellent  cause — 
nothing  less  than  the  national  existence — this  military 
and  national  spirit  requires  no  apology. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         87 

"But  we  have  long  been  deceived  by  false  counsels  of 
politicians  and  sentimentalists,  who  are  even  now  pre- 
tending that  this  is  a  war  which  will  end  war.  War 
will  never  end  as  long  as  human  nature  continues  to  be 
human  nature.  And  war  with  all  its  evils  teaches  us 
much  good.  It  reminds  us  of  the  value  of  nationality 
which  in  peace  is  apt  to  be  forgotten.  There  has  been  in 
the  recent  past  a  horrid  disease  of  internationalism,  which 
has  weakened  us  considerably." 

Nor  are  we  left  in  any  doubt  as  to  the  wider 
social  efforts  of  the  militarist  spirit  in  which  the 
Morning  Post  rejoices: 

"War  came  like  a  great  thunderstorm,  which,  while  it 
strikes  individuals  with  its  lightning,  clears  the  air  and 
cleanses  the  ground  of  heat,  vapour,  and  infection.  To 
those  who  are  thoroughly  imbued  with  these  false  ideas 
it  must  seem  as  if  nothing  remained.  Social  reform, 
land  reform,  and  all  the  other  reforms  without  which  it 
was  supposed  the  nation  could  not  live,  are  gone  clean 
out  of  the  picture.  Militarism,  said  to  be  so  bad  a  thing 
in  itself,  is  become  the  sole  business  of  the  nation.  .  .  . 
Democracy  may  still  exist,  but  it  is  no  longer  in  evidence, 
and  it  may  be  surprising  to  many  that  it  continues  to  live 
without  some  new  measure  of  wet-nursing.  Many  of  the 
cherished  liberties  of  the  subject  have  been  taken  away, 
and  even  the  Tory  may  be  allowed  to  mourn  infringe- 
ments which  the  most  conservative  of  Governments  would 
not  have  dared  to  make.  The  liberty  of  the  press  can 
hardly  be  said  to  survive:  it  has  been  permitted  to  dis- 
appear without  a  protest  from  those  journals  which  might 
have  been  supposed  to  hold  it  most  dear.  Courts-martial 
have  been  allowed  in  certain  vital  affairs  to  take  the 


88  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

place  of  the  Courts.  As  for  freedom  of  speech,  the  right 
to  lie,  which  might  have  been  thought  sacred  to  democ- 
racy, has  been  curtailed,  so  that  now  only  those  lies  are 
permitted  which  appear  to  be  in  the  public  interest,  and 
even  truth  may  not  be  uttered  if  its  effect  is  considered 
to  be  damaging  to  the  country.  Political  controversy  has 
almost  disappeared,  and  if  politics  still  exist,  they  are 
only  permitted  upon  one  side.  A  national  theatre,  a 
national  literature,  and  a  national  art  may  all  subsist  in 
war,  but  they  must  breathe  something  of  the  national 
spirit.  The  internationalism  and  the  chaotic  individual- 
ism of  peace  are  no  longer  found  acceptable." 

A  country  at  war  is  led  by  an  almost  mechan- 
ical process  to  adopt  the  very  morality  that  it 
set  out  to  fight.  It  is  all  very  well  to  talk  of 
the  enormity  of  militarism,  but  when  we  are  at 
war  our  people  must  be  militarised  at  least  tem- 
porarily in  order  to  win.  It  may  be  monstrous 
to  love  war  for  itself,  like  the  Germans,  but 
if  the  enemy  loves  it  and  you  hate  it,  he  is 
likely  to  wage  it  better  than  you.  One  must 
therefore  preach  its  hate  with  a  certain  caution. 
It  is  all  very  well  to  talk  of  international  law, 
but  if  you  observe  it  and  he  does  not,  that  gives 
him  an  advantage  and  you  can  only  equalise 
things  by  disregarding  it  too.  Ruth  and  pity  and 
mercy  may  be  noble  things,  but  they  are  near 
relatives  to  weakness  in  war.  Hate  and  the  desire 
for  vengeance  are  to  some  extent  military  assets 
— they  have,  for  instance,  a  recruiting  value. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         89 

Justice,  which  cannot  exist  without  some  liking 
for  knowing  the  point  of  view  of  the  other  side, 
and  a  determination  indeed  to  do  so,  may  be  a 
divine  passion,  but  a  people  which  sees  too  much 
of  its  enemy's  side  may  be  divided  in  its  counsels 
in  acting  against  him.  We  may  be  fighting  for 
democracy,  freedom,  parliamentary  government, 
against  despotism,  government  by  a  military 
caste,  and  restraint  of  free  speech ;  yet,  if  we  are 
to  wage  the  war  efficiently,  our  government  must 
be  autocratic,  free  speech  must  be  suspended,  and 
the  military  order  must  have  arbitrary  power. 
To  get  this  unity  of  action  in  the  direction  of 
military  efficiency,  we  establish  a  truce  of  the  dis- 
cussion of  those  principles  which  underlie  democ- 
racy, parliamentary  government,  law  and  right. 
But  the  truce  in  reality  means  not  that  the  two 
rival  elements  in  our  national  life,  the  autocratic, 
and  the  democratic,  the  militarist  and  the  anti- 
militarist,  the  authoritarian  and  the  libertarian, 
shall  both  suspend  the  advocacy  of  their  respec- 
tive ideas,  but  merely  that  one  side  shall.  The 
supposed  truce  is  not  a  truce  at  all;  it  is  an  ar- 
rangement by  which  the  advocates  of  one  par- 
ticular method  and  one  particular  set  of  princi- 
ples can  go  on  urging  that  method  and  those 
principles  as  much  as  they  like,  but  no  one  shall 
be  allowed  to  reply.  For  instance,  you  will  find 
plenty  of  people  in  England  like  Mr.  Horatio 


90  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Bottomley  and  Mr.  Leo  Maxse,  and  Lord  Curzon 
advocating,  to  a  very  wide  public,  doctrines  which 
are  certainly  not  democratic,  and  as  certainly 
militarist  and  Prussian  in  their  tendency.  But 
any  reply  to  them  or  any  advocacy  of  a  contrary 
doctrine  is  regarded  as  a  breach  of  the  truce  and 
likely  to  create  a  temper  which  will  handicap 
military  efficiency.  So  that  during  many  months 
the  public  is  hearing  one  side  of  the  case  only — 
the  militarist  side. 

Men  even  of  the  strongest  intellectual  equip- 
ment cannot  day  by  day  hear  one  side  of  a  case 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  other  without  having  their 
judgment  greatly  affected  thereby.  And  the  news- 
paper, magazine,  and  review  reader  is  the  average 
man,  not  the  man  of  exceptional  intellectual 
equipment. 

Now  that  is  important  for  this  reason:  any 
difference  of  national  character  that  may  exist 
between  two  peoples,  like  the  English  and  the 
Germans,  is  a  matter  of  absorbed  ideas,  of  the 
mind,  not  of  race.  The  Germans  are,  of  all  the 
peoples  of  Europe,  the  most  nearly  allied  to  the 
British  in  race  and  blood. 

If  twenty  years  ago  the  average  Briton  had 
been  asked  what  people  in  Europe  were  most 
like  himself  in  moral  outlook,  in  their  attitude  to 
the  things  which  really  matter — family  life, 
social  morality,  the  relations  of  the  sexes,  and  the 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         91 

respective  importance  which  we  ascribe  to  the 
various  moral  qualities — he  would  have  said  al- 
most to  a  man  that  that  nation  was  Germany. 
The  notion  that  we  were  more  naturally  allied  in 
our  character  to  the  French  would  have  appeared 
to  ninety-nine  Britons  out  of  a  hundred,  twenty 
years  ago,  almost  offensive. 

Indeed,  we  know  that  the  Germans  were  not 
always  Prussianised:  that  their  character  has 
been  modified  by  the  indoctrination  which  has 
been  part  of  that  national  military  system  to 
which,  during  the  last  generation,  they  have  been 
subjected. 

The  spectacle  of  Germany  to-day  is  proof  of 
that  infinite  capacity  for  self-deception  in  a  people 
whose  judgment  is  warped  by  the  fact  of  only 
hearing  one  side,  by  the  "nationalist"  philosophy 
and  the  psychological  bias  set  up  in  a  great 
national  struggle.  The  world  has  pronounced 
Germany  the  aggressor  and  her  conduct  in 
the  war  to  be  that  of  barbarians.  Yet  a  whole 
people,  including  great  thinkers,  some  of  the 
great  physicists  and,  beyond  all  question,  the 
greatest  organisers  and  administrators  of  the 
world,  declare  that  she  is  fighting  a  purely  de- 
fensive war  by  means  that  are  morally  justifiable 
and  in  the  long  run  the  most  humane. 

And  now  the  English  are  undergoing  the  same 
indoctrination.  Just  note  the  statements  of  fact 


92  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

made  by  the  great  London  daily  that  I  quoted  a 
page  or  two  back.  It  tells  us  flatly  that  the  coun- 
try will  not,  or  does  not,  tolerate  any  discussion 
of  the  right  or  wrong  of  its  acts ;  any  truth  which 
reflects  upon  it  is  not  allowed  to  be  stated ;  inter- 
nationalism— that  is  any  obligation  beyond  that 
to  one's  country — is  repudiated,  and  you  have  in 
its  place  the  full  flower  of  the  Prussian  doctrine 
that  things  done  for  the  fatherland  are  things 
that  carry  their  own  justification. 

Can  anyone  doubt,  if  this  picture  even  ap- 
proaches to  the  truth,  that  great  English  thinkers 
and  scientists  will  finally  be  as  capable  as  great 
German  ones,  of  justifying  any  action  whatsoever 
committed  for  the  nation's  cause.  You  have  here 
indeed  a  set  of  conditions  which  render  the  capac- 
ity for  impartial  or  outside  judgments  of  our 
country's  actions  a  human  impossibility.  Even 
in  peace  the  nationalism  of  our  times  has  pro- 
duced a  patriotic  feeling  which  requires  very 
little  stimulus  to  become  the  equivalent  of  the 
German  doctrine  that  State  interest  justifies  all. 
The  feeling  that  one's  country  stands  above  right 
and  wrong  is  of  the  essence  of  popular  patriotic 
conceptions  the  world  over.  When  Mr.  Roose- 
velt tells  us  that  we  are  right  to  support  the 
proposition,  "my  country  right  or  wrong,"  he  is 
merely  turning  into  American  the  extremest  of 
Bernhardism.  If  we  are  to  support  our  country 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         93 

right  or  wrong,  presumably  Mr.  Roosevelt  would 
have  blamed  a  German  that  protested  against  the 
invasion  of  Belgium  or  the  sinking  of  the  Lusi- 
tania.  And  if  not,  why  not? 

Nor  is  the  morality  of  this  doctrine  merely 
popular.  It  dominates  political  writing  and  think- 
ing of  the  most  authoritative  order  both  in  Eng- 
land and  America,  and  influences  in  consequence 
weighty  political  action.  An  historian  of  the 
calibre  of  Mr.  W.  A.  Phillips,  in  his  "Confedera- 
tion of  Europe/'  protests  vigorously  against  the 
idea  that  a  citizen  can  have  obligations  to  any- 
thing higher  than  his  own  State.  Speaking  of  the 
"extremists"  in  the  peace  agitation,  he  says: 

The  morality  which  inspires  this  agitation  moreover 
shocks  the  consciousness  of  those,  happily  the  majority, 
who  still  regard  patriotism  as  the  supreme  political  virtue 
and  are  not  perpared  to  hold  with  the  late  Baron  von 
Sutner  that  "in  any  case  the  interests  of  humanity  and  of 
absolute  right  are  superior  to  those  of  any  one  country."  9 

But  if  humanity  and  right  do  not  come  before 
the  interests  of  one's  own  country,  how  would 
Mr.  Phillips  blame  the  Germans  for  putting  their 
country  before  law  and  humanity? 

The  easy  descent — or  ascent,  if  you  will — 
from  one  standard  to  another,  the  almost  un- 
conscious adoption  of  that  change  I  am  trying  to 

*The  Confederation  of  Europe  (Longman's),  p.  13. 


94  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

describe,  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of  military 
methods  which  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  the 
Englishman  was  quite  sure  nothing  in  the  world 
would  induce  him  to  adopt.  Had  you  in  August, 
1914,  put  to  the  first  half-dozen  Englishmen  you 
met,  this  question :  "Would  you  sanction  the  kill- 
ing of  women  and  children  as  part  of  a  military 
operation?"  they  would  have  repudiated  the  idea 
indignantly.  When  the  first  Zeppelins  appeared  in 
England,  and  children  were  killed,  the  English 
press  quite  sincerely  described  the  act  as  murder 
of  the  vilest  kind.  An  English  prelate  said  that 
the  Kaiser  would  be  held  up  to  the  execration  of 
posterity  for  that  one  act  alone,  and  that  the 
British  government  should  announce  that  the 
German  military  chiefs  responsible  should  at  the 
close  of  the  war  be  executed  as  common  assassins. 
And  yet,  within  a  few  weeks,  English  and 
French  officers  were  killing  women  and  children 
with  bombs  thrown  from  aeroplanes ;  the  German 
press  were  recording  the  numbers  of  the  slain, 
and  the  English  press  in  some  case  were  publish- 
ing the  reports10 — and  I  am  not  aware  that  it  has 

10The  following — which  appeared  in  the  London  Times  of 
April  17,  1915 — is  merely  a  type  of  at  least  thirty  or  forty  similar 
reports  published  by  the  German  Army  Headquarters :  "In  yes- 
terday's clear  weather  the  airmen  were  very  active.  Enemy 
airmen  bombarded  places  behind  our  positions.  Freiburg  was 
again  visited  and  several  civilians,  the  majority  being  children, 
were  killed  and  wounded."  A  few  days  later  the  Paris  Temps 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         95 

occurred  to  a  single  English  critic  to  stigmatise 
this  as  anything  but  quite  normal  warfare.  Cer- 
tain of  the  French  reports,  indeed,  speak  of  the 
French  air  raids  on  unfortified  German  towns  as 
"reprisals."  That,  I  think,  goes  a  little  further. 
What  should  we  say  in  peace  time  of  this  conduct : 
A  man  having  murdered  a  child  and  escaped,  we 
seized  the  man's  child,  or  that  of  his  sister,  and 

(April  22,  1915)  reproduces  the  German  accounts  of  French  air 
raids  where  bombs  were  dropped  on  Kandern,  Loerrach,  Mul- 
heim,  Habsheim,  Wiesenthal,  Tuelingen,  Mannheim.  These  raids 
were  carried  out  by  squads  of  airmen  and  the  bombs  were  thrown 
particularly  at  railway  stations  and  factories.  Previous  to  this, 
English  and  French  airmen  had  been  particularly  active  in 
Belgium,  dropping  bombs  on  Zebrugge,  Bruges,  Middlekirke, 
and  other  towns.  One  German  official  report  tells  how  a  bomb 
fell  on  to  a  loaded  street  car,  killing  many  women  and  children. 
Another  (dated  Sept.  7)  contains  the  following:  "In  the  course  of 
an  enemy  aeroplane  attack  on  Lichtervelde,  north  of  Roulers  in 
Flanders,  seven  Belgian  inhabitants  were  killed  and  two  were 
injured."  As  I  write  these  lines  the  American  paper  on  my 
table  contains  the  following  despatch  from  Zurich,  dated  Sept. 
24:  "At  yesterday's  meeting  of  the  Stuttgart  City  Council  the 
Mayor  and  Councilors  protested  vigorously  against  the  recent 
French  raid  upon  an  undefended  city.  Burgomaster  Lauten- 
schlager  asserted  that  an  enemy  that  attacked  harmless  civilians 
was  fighting  a  lost  cause." 

The  English,  indeed,  are  supposed  to  be  developing  and 
specializing  on  this  form  of  warfare.  And  yet  it  is  humanly 
impossible  to  wage  it  without  killing  women  and  children.  The 
present  writer,  while  acting  for  a  short  time  as  a  surgeon's 
orderly,  happens  to  have  witnessed  the  return  of  an  English 
officer  from  a  night  bomb-throwing  raid  into  the  enemy's  lines 
and  to  have  heard  his  account  of  just  what  took  place.  The 
aviators  themselves  have  no  illusions  as  to  the  possibility  of 
sparing  civilians  in  this  form  of  warfare. 


96  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

put  it  to  death?  It  were  better,  perhaps,  not  to 
talk  of  these  things  as  "retaliations."  What  re- 
sponsibility had  the  women  and  children  of  Treves 
for  the  bombardment  of  Luneville  ? 

Indeed,  English  writers  are  now  making  very 
cold  and  calculated  arguments  as  to  the  absurdity 
of  distinguishing  between  combatants  and  non- 
combatants  at  all.  Mr.  Maurice  Low  now  says : 

The  complexities  of  modern  warfare  make  it  impos- 
sible to  differentiate  between  combatant  and  non-com- 
batant. The  man,  woman,  or  child  working  in  the 
Krupp  factory  in  Essen  is  as  much  a  combatant  as  the 
Prussian  private  in  the  trenches  in  France.  The  private 
fires  a  rifle,  and  if  his  aim  is  good  he  kills  a  British  or 
French  or  Belgian  soldier ;  yes,  but  with  what  ? — with  the 
cartridge  that  is  the  handiwork  of  men,  women,  and 
children  working  in  the  Krupp  factory  in  Essen.  ...  A 
German  man  or  woman  who  contributes  to  the  fighting 
efficiency  of  Germany  loses  his  or  her  status  as  a  non- 
combatant.  ...  If  the  enemy  is  placed  on  short  rations 
its  moral  and  physical  strength  is  impaired.  .  .  .  To  the 
emotional  this  may  sound  very  dreadful;  and  it  is  very 
dreadful.  Slowly  to  strangle  a  nation  to  death,  to  weaken 
its  power  of  resistance,  to  enfeeble  it  by  hunger — these 
things  move  to  pity.  But  war,  as  it  has  been  observed,  is 
a  brutal  business.11 

In  other  words,  the  increased  co-ordination  of 
modern  life,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  drift  of 
military  invention  on  the  other,  mean  that 

"North  American  Review,  Sept.,  1915. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         97 

modern  warfare  will  necessarily  be  more  and 
more  a  matter  of  promiscuous  destruction — pro- 
miscuous both  as  to  materials  and  to  persons — 
and  if  we  are  to  continue  waging  it  we  shall  have 
to  fit  our  morality  to  its  needs.  The  Prussian  has 
merely  anticipated  us.  We  shall  have  to  follow 
him  and  go  one  better. 

As  Mr.  Robert  Blatchford,  the  popular  English 
Socialist,  so  puts  it :  "Always  go  one  better.  .  .  . 
If  we  can  make  a  gas  as  deadly,  a  gas  still  more 
lethal  and  horrible,  I  say  it  is  our  duty  to  our 
soldiers  to  make  as  much  of  it  as  we  can  and  to 
use  it  upon  the  brutal  dastards  opposed  to  us 
without  remorse  or  pity."  12 

Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc,  regarded  as  one  of  the  fore- 
most military  critics  in  England,  anticipates  that 
when  the  Russians  invade  Silesia,  "they  will  drive 
before  them  the  civilian  population,  leaving  the 
mines  and  factories  idle.  For  to  leave  a  civilian 
population  behind  the  Russian  advance,  after  the 
methods  adopted  by  the  Prussians,  would  be  to 
invite  disaster."  13 

And  the  same  author  urges  the  need  for  this 
in  the  western  invasion  of  Germany  as  well. 
Maurice  Maeterlinck  has  made  a  like  claim,  and 
it  is  put  a  little  more  crudely  by  an  English 
journal,  as  follows: 

"Weekly  Despatch  (London),  May  16,  1915. 
"Nash's  Magazine,  February,  1915. 


98  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

"It  is  being  said  that  when  the  Allied  armies — British, 
French,  Belgian,  and  Russian — enter  Germany,  they  will 
not  ravage  and  destroy.  They  will  march  across  the 
country  as  peacefully  as  is  possible  to  an  invading  force. 
If  they  do,  a  policy  of  very  great  unwisdom  will  have 
been  adopted.  The  one  thing  that  Germany  needs  is 
the  infliction  of  a  pitiless  punishment — one  that  will  bring 
home  to  every  citizen  in  the  German  Empire  his  personal 
share  in  all  the  devilries  that  have  been  committed,  and 
make  him  realise  that  the  lash  of  civilisation  is  being 
applied  to  his  back  by  way  of  requital.  .  .  .  Forbearance, 
when  you  are  dealing  with  a  mad  dog  or  a  tiger  insane 
with  the  lust  for  blood,  is  an  impossible  thing.  So  far  as 
such  creatures  are  capable  of  any  reasoning,  they  interpret 
it  at  once  as  a  sign  of  weakness.  That  is  how  the  German 
nation  is  going  to  interpret  any  failure  on  the  part  of 
civilisation  to  inflict  the  very  utmost  of  the  vengeance  for 
the  innumerable  crimes  committed  in  France  and  Bel- 
gium. .  .  .  Like  the  other  devils,  the  Germans  will  'be- 
lieve and  tremble.'  Any  kid-glove  policy  means  simply 
that  Germany  will  laugh  in  her  sleeve  and  sharpen  her 
knife  for  another  onslaught  on  the  vitals  of  civilisation. 
What  is  wanted — and  what  we  all  hope  to  see — is  the 
Belgium  army  in  Germany  with  a  fortnight's  free  hand. 

The  beer-gardens  will  be  quieter  then."  14 

* 

In  its  judgment  of  the  German  atrocities  in 
Belgium  and  elsewhere,  American  public  opinion 
has  very  properly  made  this  important  distinc- 
tion: the  menacing  and  barbarous  fact  in  it 
all  is  not  the  isolated  acts  of  cruelty  and  besti- 
ality— it  is  recognised  that  such  acts  are  common 

"The  Financial  News,  September  30,  1914. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?         99 

in  all  wars,  though  every  nation  passes  the  sponge 
over  its  own  contribution  to  the  record — but  the 
formal  approval  and  sanction  of  those  acts.  It 
is  that  which  tends  to  set  up  a  new  code,  to  estab- 
lish a  new  morality  among  men. 

And  what  I  am  trying  to  emphasise  here  is  that 
it  is  precisely  that  which  this  war  is  accomplish- 
ing for  all  sides.  Louvain  and  Aerschot  were 
not  the  outcome  of  something  inherent  in  the 
German  race;  they  were  the  outcome  of  things 
that  are  inherent  in,  and  a  necessary  part  of, 
militarism  and  its  modern  development;  all  sides 
are  in  process  of  adopting  its  morality. 

This  is  part  of  the  price  of  war  and  the  sane 
and  courageous  thing  is  to  face  it.  If  you  make 
war  at  all,  in  the  end  you  will  make  it  in  that 
fashion,  and  there  is  no  protective  serum  in  the 
blood  of  Briton  or  French  or  Italian  that  will 
render  him  immune.  "Among  the  many  delu- 
sions," says  Mr.  Wells  with  very  great  truth, 
"that  this  war  has  usefully  dispelled,  is  the  delu- 
sion that  you  can  make  war  a  little,  but  not  war 
altogether;  that  the  civilised  world  can  look  for- 
ward to  a  sort  of  tame  war  in  the  future,  a  war 
crossed  with  peace,  a  lap  dog  war  that  will  bark 
but  not  bite.  War  is  war;  it  is  the  cessation  of 
law  and  argument,  it  is  outrage.  Even  our  war 
in  South  Africa,  certainly  the  most  decently  con- 
ducted war  in  history,  got  to  farm  burning  and 


ioo  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

concentration  camps.  Violence  has  no  reserves 
but  further  violence.  .  .  .  These  are  no  peculiar 
German  iniquities.  .  .  .  The  German  is  really, 
one  must  remember,  a  human  being  like  the  rest 
of  us,  at  the  worst  just  merely  a  little  worse  in 
his  upbringing."  I  am  not  drawing  from  this 
for  the  moment  any  final  conclusion.  I  am  merely 
trying  to  emphasise  a  fact.  The  result  which  we 
shall  get  for  this  price  that  we  pay  for  military 
efficiency  may  be  worth  it;  it  may  be  necessary; 
there  may  be  no  other  means.  All  I  am  saying  is 
that  success  in  this  particular  process  will  not 
liberate  us  from  the  Prussian  morality. 

One  point  may  be  raised.  It  will  perhaps  be 
said  that  neither  the  special  temper  which  has 
arisen  in  this  war,  nor  the  method  of  its  conduct 
on  both  sides,  would  have  arisen  if  the  German 
had  not,  by  conduct  which  has  no  parallel, 
started  it. 

Well,  of  course,  one  might  ask  what  made  the 
German  set  the  pace  in  this  way  if  it  is  not  the 
militarisation  to  which  he  has  subjected  himself, 
and  pushed  farther  than  other  people.  But  as  to 
the  morality  which  war  sets  up,  we  must  keep  in 
mind  this  fact:  While  it  may  be  true  that  the 
conduct  of  which  the  Germans  have  been  guilty 
is  without  parallel,  it  is  just  that  kind  of  conduct 
which  every  nation  in  every  war  has  alleged 
against  its  enemy.  And,  believing  it,  has  felt 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?        101 

about  the  enemy  as  we  feel  about  the  Germans. 
Thus  the  particular  temper  which  German  con- 
duct has  provoked  is  precisely  the  temper  which 
is  provoked  in  every  war,  even  though  it  is  based 
on  false  reports.  At  a  time  when  England  was 
suppressing  the  Boer  Republics  a  large  section 
of  English  opinion  found  it  as  natural  to  justify 
"severity"  as  it  now  finds  it  natural  to  justify  the 
killing  of  non-combatants  on  the  ground  that  only 
German  conduct  could  have  led  them  to  it. 

When  Swinburne  could  write  of  the  Boer 
women  and  children  as  "whelps  and  dams  of 
murderous  foes"  5  it  is  not  surprising  to  find 
English  newspapers  making  such  recommenda- 
tions as  the  following : 

The  women  and  children  are  frequently  employed  to 
carry  messages.  Of  course,  they  must  be  included  in 
military  measures  and  transported  or  despatched.  .  .  . 
\\  e  have  undertaken  to  conquer  the  Transvaal,  and  if 
nothing  will  make  that  sure  except  the  removal  of  the 
Dutch  inhabitants,  they  must  be  removed,  men,  women, 
and  children.16 

Mr.  Provost  Battersby,  a  well-known  London 
journalist,  is  indeed  quite  ready,  if  needs  be,  not 

"Of  the  Boers  as  soldiers,  Swinburne  wrote: 
"Vile  foes  like  wolves  let  free, 

Whose  war  is  waged  where  none  may  fight  or  flee, 
With  women  and  with  weaklings.  Speech  and  song 
Lack  utterance  now  for  loathing." 

l"St.  James's  Gazette  (London),  August  21,  1900. 


102  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

to  excuse  but  glorify  the  process.    This  has  the 
true  Nietzschean  ring : 

The  sentiment  that  would  wage  war  with  considera- 
tion is  not  humanity,  but  a  shallow  and  calamitous  senti- 
mentalism,  that,  to  avoid  the  reproachful  appearance  of 
suffering,  increases  tenfold  its  persistence  and  intensity. 
War  is  still  a  method  of  barbarism  and  must  be  to  the 
end.  So  let  us  wage  it  nobly  and  austerely,  as  the  bar- 
barians of  the  past,  and  not  with  the  blighting  pusil- 
lanimity of  a  too  civilised  nation.17 

And  if  Americans  imagine  that  they  are 
exempt,  let  them — without  even  going  back  to 
the  conduct  which  each  side  alleged  of  the  other 
(I  am  not  talking  of  what  really  took  place)  in 
the  North  and  South  War — consider  the  attitude 
of  responsible  papers  and  public  men  towards 
some  of  the  incidents  of  the  Philippine  conquest, 
as,  for  example,  General  Jacob  Smith's  order  to 
"kill  everything  over  ten"  in  the  island  of 
Samar.18 

But,  indeed,  one  has  only  to  go  to  our  own 
English  and  American  military  authorities,  writ- 
ing in  cold  blood  as  to  the  most  efficient  method 
of  military  action,  to  see  how  very  slight  is  the 

"Morning  Post  (London),  August  5,  1902. 

18I  have  dealt  with  the  American  attitude  in  such  matters  in 
a  chapter  entitled  "A  Retrospect  of  American  Patriotism"  in 
an  earlier  book  ("America  and  the  World  State":  Putnam's). 
The  quotations  from  Lea,  Murray,  and  Roberts  here  given 
appeared  therein. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?        103 

push  needed  for  them  to  reach  the  present 
Prussian  standard.  And  this  is  true  as  much  of 
the  general  political  ethics  which  lead  to  war,  as 
to  the  manner  of  conducting  it. 

An  American  author,  General  Homer  Lea,  has 
written  a  book  which  he  has  called  (suggestively 
in  this  connection)  "The  Day  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon."  It  was  dedicated  to  Lord  Roberts,  the 
most  popular  English  soldier  and  English  na- 
tional character  of  modern  times.  The  book  was 
well  reviewed  in  England,  and  I  am  not  aware 
that  it  particularly  shocked  public  opinion  in 
this  country.  Yet  its  thesis  is  that  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  is  to  conquer  the  world  and  to  do  it  with- 
out regard  to  any  ethical  considerations  what- 
soever. The  mere  fact  of  the  Anglo-Saxon's 
strength  is  to  justify  the  whole  thing.  If  the 
reader  can  discern  in  it  any  moral  superiority  of 
doctrine  to  that  preached  by  Bernhardi  he  has 
very  remarkable  powers  of  discrimination.  As  to 
the  ethics  of  "expansion"  which  are  to  justify  the 
Anglo-Saxon  conquest  of  the  world,  General  Lea 
(pp.  10,  n)  says: 

"The  brutality  of  all  national  development  is  appar- 
ent, and  we  make  no  excuse  for  it.  ... 

"Nations  cannot  be  created,  nor  can  they  become  great 
by  any  purely  ethical  or  spiritual  expansion.  The  estab- 
lishment, in  great  or  small  entities,  of  tribes  and  states 
is  the  resultant  only  of  their  physical  power :  and  when- 


104  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

ever  there  is  a  reversal,  or  an  attempted  reversal,  to  this, 
the  result  is  either  internal  dissolution  or  sudden  destruc- 
tion, their  dismembered  territories  going  to  make  up  the 
dominions  of  their  conquerors. 

"In  just  such  a  manner  has  the  British  Empire  been 
made  up  from  the  fragments  of  four  great  maritime 
Powers ;  the  satrapies  of  petty  potentates,  and  the  wilder- 
ness of  nameless  savages." 

By  way  of  driving  the  point  home,  Lord 
Roberts  himself  illustrates  it  from  the  history  of 
the  British  Empire.  In  his  "Message  to  the 
Nation"  (pp.  8,  9)  he  says: 

"How  was  this  Empire  of  Britain  founded?  War 
founded  this  Empire — war  and  conquest!  When  we, 
therefore,  masters  by  war  of  one-third  of  the  habitable 
globe,  when  we  propose  to  Germany  to  disarm,  to  curtail 
her  navy  or  diminish  her  army,  Germany  naturally  re- 
fuses; and  pointing,  not  without  justice,  to  the  road  by 
which  England,  sword  in  hand,  has  climbed  to  her  un- 
matched eminence,  declares  openly,  or  in  the  veiled 
language  of  diplomacy,  that  by  the  same  path,  if  by  no 
other,  Germany  is  determined  also  to  ascend!  Who 
amongst  us,  knowing  the  past  of  this  nation,  and  the  past 
of  all  nations  and  cities  that  have  ever  added  the  lustre 
of  their  name  to  human  annals,  can  accuse  Germany  or 
regard  the  utterance  of  one  of  her  greatest  a  year  and  a 
half  ago  (or  of  General  Bernhardi  three  months  ago) 
with  any  feelings  except  those  of  respect?" 

The  American  author  cited — whose  books,  by 
the  way,  were  recommended  to  the  writer  by 
a  great  British  pro-consul — treats  of  neutrality 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?        105 

and  the  ethics  of  its  violation  which  are  to  mark 
the  onward  march  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  I 
hardly  dare  think  what  we  should  have  said  if 
Bernhardi,  instead  of  General  Homer  Lea,  had 
written  the  following: 

The  occupation  of  the  Persian  and  Afghanistan 
frontiers  prior  to  war  with  Russia,  or  the  European 
frontiers  in  a  conflict  with  Germany,  arouses  in  the 
British  nation  the  appearance  of  great  opposition  to  the 
violation  of  neutral  territory.  This  is  false,  for  the 
Empire  is  not  moved  by  the  sanctity  of  neutrality. 

Neutrality  of  States  under  the  conditions  just  men- 
tioned has  never  heretofore  nor  will  in  future  have  any 
place  in  international  association  in  time  of  war.  Such 
neutrality  is  a  modern  delusion.  It  is  an  excrescence. 

After  justifying  the  sudden  descent  of  Britain 
upon  Portuguese  and  Danish  territory,  General 
Lea  says: 

So  correct  is  the  principle  of  this  initiation  that  it 
stands  out  with  remarkable  brilliancy  in  the  darkness 
of  innumerable  military  errors  made  by  the  Saxon  race. 

If  England  were,  therefore,  justified  in  seizing  Den- 
mark in  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  for  no 
other  reason  than  to  prevent  the  employment  of  the 
Danish  fleet  by  the  French,  how  much  more  is  she  justi- 
fied during  peace  in  the  twentieth  century  in  the  occupa- 
tion of  its  southern  frontiers  for  the  protection  of  both 
nations  against  German  aggression.19 

And  so  on,  and  so  on. 

19  "The  Day  of  the  Anglo-Saxon,"  p.  228. 


io6  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

And  General  Lea  has  English  compeers. 

An  English  military  writer,  Major  Stewart 
Murray,  has  written  a  book  which  is  in  some 
sense  a  counterpart  to  that  of  the  American 
author,  Lea,  entitled  "The  Future  Peace  of  the 
Anglo-Saxons."  Lord  Roberts  writes  for  it  a 
laudatory  preface.  One  can  imagine  this  book 
of  an  English  officer — commended  by  the  greatest 
of  English  soldiers — being  translated  into  Ger- 
man as  Bernhardi  has  been  translated  into  Eng- 
lish, and  circulated  as  representative  of  English 
political  morality  and  indicating  the  real  English 
view  of  such  things  as  the  sanctity  of  interna- 
tional law.  Major  Murray  (pp.  4041),  speak- 
ing of  the  seizure  of  the  Danish  Fleet  in  1807, 
says: 

"Nothing  has  ever  been  done  by  any  other  nation  more 
utterly  in  defiance  of  the  conventionalities  of  so-called 
international  law.  We  considered  it  advisable  and  neces- 
sary and  expedient,  and  we  had  the  power  to  do  it ;  there- 
fore we  did  it. 

"Are  we  ashamed  of  it?  No,  certainly  not;  we  are 
proud  of  it.  ... 

"For  people  in  this  country  to  talk  of  the  sanctity  of 
international  law  is  nothing  but  hypocrisy  or  ignorance." 

And  so  as  to  "frightfulness."  We  select  from 
Clausewitz,  or  from  the  German  War  Book,  pas- 
sages which  seem  to  place  Germans  outside  the 
pale  of  civilised  people.  Yet  these  passages  can 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?        107 

be  duplicated  almost  word  for  word  among  Eng- 
lish authors.  Major  Murray  is  frank  enough 
indeed  to  welcome  Clausewitz  as  "the  Shake- 
speare of  military  writers,  the  greatest  and  deep- 
est of  military  thinkers,  whose  book  forms  to-day 
the  foundation  of  all  military  thought  in  Britain," 
and  warmly  applauds  the  appeals  against  "sick- 
ening humanitarianism."  Major  Murray  fully 
endorses  the  principle  of  making  war  as  "fright- 
ful" as  possible: 

"The  worst  of  all  errors  in  war  is  a  mistaken  spirit  of 
benevolence.  .  .  .  For  'he  who  uses  his  force  unspar- 
ingly, without  reference  to  the  quantity  of  bloodshed, 
must  obtain  a  superiority  if  his  adversary  does  not  act 
likewise.'  .  .  .  Now  this  is  an  elementary  fact  which  it 
is  most  desirable  that  those  of  our  politicians  and  Exeter 
Hall  preachers  and  numerous  old  women  of  both  sexes 
who  raise  hideous  outcries  about  'methods  of  barbarism,' 
etc.,  every  time  we  have  a  war,  should  endeavour  to 
learn.  By  their  very  outcries  for  moderation  and  weak- 
ness they  clearly  show  that  they  know  nothing  about  war. 
They  impede  the  proper  energetic  use  of  the  national 
forces.  They  are  the  greatest  possible  enemies  to  our 
peace." 

Nor  does  Major  Murray  stand  alone.  Admiral 
Lord  Fisher  has  laid  down  the  same  principles 
just  as  vigorously: 

"The  humanising  of  war!  You  might  as  well  talk 
of  humanising  Hell !  When  a  silly  ass  at  the  Hague  got 
up  and  talked  about  the  amenities  of  civilised  warfare, 


io8  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

and  putting  your  prisoners'  feet  in  hot  water  and  giving 
them  gruel,  my  reply,  I  regret  to  say,  was  considered 
totally  unfit  for  publication.  As  if  war  could  be  civilised ! 
If  I  am  in  command  when  war  breaks  out  I  shall  issue 
as  my  orders : 

"The  essence  of  war  is  violence. 

"Moderation  in  war  is  imbecility. 

"Hit  first,  hit  hard,  and  hit  anywhere. 

".  .  .  If  you  rub-  it  in  both  at  home  and  abroad  that 
you  are  ready  for  instant  war  with  every  unit  of  your 
strength  in  the  first  line,  and  intend  to  be  first  in  and 
hit  your  enemy  in  the  belly  and  kick  him  when  he  is  down, 
and  boil  your  prisoners  in  oil  (if  you  take  any)  and 
torture  his  women  and  children,  then  people  will  keep 
clear  of  you."  20 

Lord  Fisher  was,  perhaps,  not  quite  serious, 
although  his  biographer  says  of  him:  "He  had 
the  not  uncommon  notion — which  uniform  experi- 
ence of  mankind  has  shown  to  be  false — that 
nations  are  deterred  from  going  to  war  by  fear 
of  the  atrocities  which  accompany  conflict.  .  .  . 
It  is  probably  the  conviction  of  many  who 
would  never  dare  to  express  it,  although  they 
would  be  quick  enough  to  act  upon  it  when  the 
time  for  action  came." 

Some  of  Admiral  Fisher's  French  colleagues 
are  just  as  "vigorous."  We  are  apt  to  forget 

"From  a  character  sketch  by  the  late  W.  T.  Stead,  which 
appeared  in  the  Review  of  Reviews  (London)  for  February, 
1910. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?        109 

that  the  German  submarine  warfare  was  precisely 
the  plan  of  campaign  which  the  younger  naval 
men  of  France  ("la  jeune  ecole,"  as  they  were 
called)  advocated  some  years  ago  when  the  sub- 
marine first  appeared,  as  the  true  tactics  against 
an  island  power.  (At  that  time,  of  course, 
Britain  was  France's  prospective  enemy  and  the 
one  against  whom  the  invention  of  the  submarine 
in  France  was  mainly  directed. )  Admiral  Aube, 
writing  on  naval  war  in  general,  lays  down  these 
principles : 

If  a  great  ruler  (Frederic  the  Great),  philosopher,  and 
master  of  the  art  of  war,  can  declare  that  wealth  is  the 
sinew  of  war,  anything  that  strikes  at  the  enemy's  wealth, 
a  fortiori  everything  that  can  affect  that  at  its  source, 
becomes  not  only  legitimate  in  war  but  imperative.  We 
must  expect  then  to  see  battleships  that  have  secured 
command  of  the  sea  turn  their  power  of  attack  and 
destruction,  in  default  of  adversaries  that  will  not  meet 
them  in  fight,  against  all  coast  towns,  fortified  or  not, 
peaceful  or  combatant,  burn  them,  ruin  them,  or  at  least 
impose  merciless  ransoms  upon  them.  That  was  the 
method  of  the  past,  it  is  not  that  of  the  present,  but  it 
will  be  that  of  the  future.  .  .  .  Fleets  can  only  play  a 
worthy  part  in  war  if  we  descend  from  the  cloudy  heights 
of  that  sentimentality  which  has  been  created  by  this 
monstrous  association  of  words:  the  rights  of  war,  and 
return  to  logic  and  reality,  which  rule  the  world.  .  .  . 
The  supreme  object  of  war  is  to  do  the  greatest  possible 
injury  to  the  enemy.21 

"La  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  March  15,  1882,  p.  331. 


no  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

But  perhaps  the  most  pathetic  illustration  of 
the  tendency  with  which  we  are  dealing — that  of 
a  nation  to  become,  by  successful  military  re- 
sistance to  military  ambition,  itself  imperialist 
and  militarist — is  furnished  by  the  recent  his- 
tory of  Italy.  Her  fight  for  unity  and  freedom 
from  the  oppression  of  the  imperial  ambition 
of  other  military  states,  stirred  the  world.  But, 
the  consolidation  which  enabled  Italy  to  throw 
off  the  foreign  yoke  and  become  a  nation,  also, 
unhappily,  enabled  her  to  enter  one  of  the  groups 
of  the  great  military  powers.  That  fact  has  en- 
tirely changed  the  character  of  Italian  national- 
ism. "Few  people  realise,"  says  Mr.  T.  L. 
Stoddard,22  "the  intensity  of  the  movement  which 
during  the  last  few  years  has  been  transforming 
Italian  thought.  This  movement,  expansionist 
and  aggressive  to  the  highest  degree,  calls  itself 
Nationalism  but  is  in  reality  a  sublimated  Im- 
perialism." Mr.  Stoddard  presents  a  mass  of 
evidence  which  would  seem  to  show  that  Italian 
Imperialism  is  relatively  much  more  violent  and 
widespread,  and  only  lacks  the  power  to  become 
as  dangerous,  as  its  Prussian  equivalent. 

Its  exponents  fully  recognise  that  it  is  the  en- 
dowment of  Nationalism  with  power,  its  mili- 
tarisation, that  transforms  it  into  aggressive 
imperialism. 

"In  the  Forum,  Sept.,  1915. 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?        in 

"One  is  a  Nationalist,"  says  Professor  Cor- 
radini,  one  of  the  prophets  of  Italian  Imperialism, 
"while  waiting  to  be  able  to  become  an  Imperialist 
— later  on."  He  prophesies  that  "in  twenty  years 
all  Italy  will  be  Imperialist."  His  prophecy  is  in 
process  of  realisation. 

It  is  one  of  the  penalties  of  a  military  alliance 
that  one  must  never  tell  an  unpleasant  truth  about 
an  ally,  and  presumably  that  is  why  the  English 
public  know  nothing  apparently  of  the  extremely 
dangerous  ambitions  growing  up  in  Italy.  The 
facts  which  Mr.  Stoddard  reveals — and  of  which 
other  impartial  observers  have  at  times  given 
hints — point  to  a  grave  and  menacing  problem 
for  the  victorious  allies  at  the  end  of  the  war. 
Speaking  of  the  Nationalists  who  have  now  be- 
come so  powerful  in  Italian  politics — who,  indeed, 
of  late  seem  to  have  dominated  national  policy — 
he  says : 

"Their  eyes  have  never  been  fixed  solely  upon  Tren- 
tino  and  Trieste,  nor  have  they  considered  Austria  as 
Italy's  sole  potential  enemy.  Space  forbids  the  elabora- 
tion of  this  point,  but  a  wealth  of  Nationalist  utterances 
might  be  adduced.  To  sum  up  the  matter:  The  Nation- 
alists, while  of  course  never  forgetting  Trieste  and  Tren- 
tino,  also  remember  that  French  Corsica,  Nice,  and  Tunis, 
English  Malta  and  Swiss  Ticino  are  all  inhabited  by 
Italian  populations.  If  Austria  has  dominated  the  Adri- 
atic, France  and  England  control  the  Mediterranean. 
Nationalist  colonial  aspirations  extend  far  beyond  Albania 


ii2  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

over  the  East  Mediterranean  basin.  This  last  is  im- 
portant because  the  Italian  Government  here  apparently 
shares  in  great  measure  the  Nationalist  point  of  view. 
Italy's  refusal  to  evacuate  Rhodes  and  the  other  Aegean 
islands  occupied  by  her  during  the  Tripolitan  War  has 
been  supplemented  by  the  staking  out  of  a  large  sphere 
of  influence  in  Southwest  Asia  Minor  and  by  a  markedly 
aggressive  attitude  throughout  the  entire  Levant  from 
Smyrna  to  Alexandria.  The  insistence  of  the  Italian 
Government  on  its  eastern  policy  was  revealed  by  the 
diplomatic  duel  between  Sir  Edward  Grey  and  the  late 
Marquis  di  San  Giuliano  during  the  opening  months  of 
1914." 

In  short,  the  demand  is  that  Italy  shall  now  set 
out  to  fill  the  role  of  ancient  Rome.  "Italy  must 
become  once  more  the  first  nation  of  the  world," 
says  Corradini.  His  colleague,  Signer  Rocco,  in 
a  book  published  early  in  1914,  explains  how  it 
can  be  accomplished: 

"We  are  prolific.  Hitherto  we  have  had  to  submit  to 
the  injustice  of  nature,  for  we  were  not  numerous  and 
the  others  outnumbered  us.  ...  But  to-day  we  also 
are  numerous.  .  .  .  We  will  soon  have  overtaken,  even 
surpassed  the  others.  ...  It  is  said  that  all.  the  other 
territories  are  occupied.  But  strong  nations,  or  nations 
on  the  path  of  progress  conquer  .  .  .  territories  occupied 
by  nations  in  decadence.  Italy  will  know  how  to  create  a 
culture  peculiar  to  itself  and  to  impress  ...  its  national 
seal  upon  the  universal  intellectual  development." 

Another  member  of  the  same  school,  Luigi 
Villari,  well  known  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  public,, 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?        113 

rejoices  that  for  the  purposes  of  this  programme 
"the  cobwebs  of  International  Socialism  and 
mean-spirited  Pacifism  have  been  swept  away. 
Italians  are  beginning  to  feel  in  whatever  part  of 
the  world  they  may  happen  to  be,  something  of 
the  pride  of  the  Roman  citizen." 

Signer  Scipione  Sighele  confirms  it:  "Italy 
since  the  war  is  another  Italy.  She  has  revealed 
something  which  before  did  not  exist.  Her  people 
vibrate  with  an  enthusiasm  at  first  judged  ridicu- 
lous. A  breath  of  passion  animates  all  souls.  .  .  . 
Terrible  as  a  menace,  which  is  the  instinct  of  the 
race.  .  .  .  The  desire  of  a  great  Will."  This 
writer  also  condemns  the  ideals  of  peace  and  a 
united  Europe : 

"War  must  be  loved  for  itself.  ...  To  say  'War  is 
the  most  horrible  of  evils,'  to  talk  of  war  as  'an  unhappy 
necessity/  to  declare  that  'we  should  never  attack  but 
always  know  how  to  defend  ourselves,'  to  say  these 
things,  is  as  dangerous  as  to  make  out-and-out  pa'cifist 
and  anti-militarist  speeches.  It  is  creating  for  the  future 
a  conflict  of  duties ;  duties  towards  humanity,  duties 
towards  the  Fatherland." 

Corradini  expands  on  the  text : 

"All  our  efforts  will  tend  towards  making  the  Italian 
a  warlike  race.  We  will  give  it  a  new  Will,  we  will 
instil  into  it  the  appetite  for  power,  the  need  of  mighty 
hopes.  We  will  create  a  religion — the  religion  of  the 
Fatherland  victorious  over  the  other  nations." 


II4  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

And  for  that  purpose  Professor  Corradini 
wants  the  Italian  nation  to  discard  the  "foreign" 
ideas  of  English  Liberalism  and  French  democ- 
racy. These  are  too  individualist.  The  State 
and  Nation  must  be  placed  first.  Indeed  the  whole 
Nationalist  movement  in  Italy  seems  frankly  anti- 
democratic in  the  Anglo-Saxon  sense.  Its  posi- 
tion is  indicated  by  the  motto:  "Per  il  Popolo, 
contro  la  Democrazia." 

Significantly  enough,  in  the  light  of  subsequent 
events,  a  report  made  to  the  Nationalist  Con- 
gress in  Milan  a  few  months  before  the  war,  up- 
holds the  political  conceptions  of  the  Italian 
Machiavelli  as  against  those  of  English  and 
French  individualism. 

Mr.  Stoddard  sums  up  a  review  from  which 
the  preceding  is  largely  taken,  and  which  seems 
to  show  that  the  Bernhardis  of  Italy  are  both 
more  numerous  and  more  powerful  that  those 
even  of  Germany,  by  the  statement: 

"The  outcome  of  the  European  War  is,  indeed,  the 
touchstone,  not  only  of  Italian  hopes,  but  perhaps  of  the 
Nationalist  movement  itself.  Italian  defeat  might  well  be 
followed  by  an  Anti-Imperialist  revulsion  akin  to  that 
after  Adowa,  but  naturally  of  much  more  acute  intensity. 
On  the  other  hand,  Italian  victory,  judging  by  the  con- 
sequences of  the  Tripolitan  War,  would  probably  mean 
such  further  indorsement  of  Nationalist  ideals  as  to 
sweep  the  Italian  people  fairly  into  the  ambitious  race 
for  world-dominion." 


ANGLO-SAXON  OR  PRUSSIAN?        115 

The  Prussian,  as  the  most  efficient  soldier  of 
present-day  Europe,  has  shown  us  how  war  in  our 
modern  world  with  modern  instruments  must  be 
waged  if  men  would  have  success  in  it;  how  a 
nation  must  prepare  itself  for  it,  how  its  mind 
must  be  shaped  and  its  soul  adapted.  Presum- 
ably, if  men  go  to  war  at  all,  they  will  try  to  be 
successful  in  it.  The  Prussian  even  may  dis- 
appear, but  the  process  of  competition,  the  elim- 
ination of  those  unfit  by  heart  or  mind  to  follow 
this  art,  will  always  tend  to  give  us  other  Prus- 
sians. If  war,  as  we  now  know  it,  is  really  in- 
evitable, then  a  Prussian  world  is  inevitable. 


But  what  of  this  instrument  of  sea  power  that 
does  not  seem  to  demand  the  Prussianisation  of 
those  who  create  and  use  it  ?  Cannot  that  instru- 
ment hold  in  check  the  other  and  protect  the 
world  from  militarisation,  give  to  it  a  dominant 
society  that  shall  not  be  Prussianised? 

The  three  following  chapters  deal  with  that 
question. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER 


If  "Marinism"  has  not  the  special  political  and  social 
dangers  connected  with  militarism  (as  in  the  first  chapter 
we  saw  that  it  has  not)  may  not  the  Anglo-Saxons  find 
therein  a  means  of  extending  their  influence  without 
paying  the  moral  price  involved  in  Prussianism?  To 
answer  that  it  is  necessary  to  realise  how  sea  power  works. 
This  chapter  gives  a  summary  of  the  general  conclusions 
of  authoritative  modern  strategists  on  the  operation  of 
sea  power  and  the  relation  it  must  bear  to  military  power. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER 

WHAT  does  "sea  power"  mean? 
The  world  comes  to  use  such  a  word,  just 
as  it  may  speak  of  "evolution"  or  any  other  large 
process  with  very  wide  variations  of  meaning. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  "sea  power"  is  very  difficult 
of  precise  definition.  At  the  end  of  his  work  on 
"The  Navy  and  Sea  Power"1  David  Hannay  asks 
whether,  after  all,  in  our  survey  of  maritime 
history  we  are  able  to  tell  exactly  what  "sea 
power"  is,  and  what  share  it  has  had  "in  pro- 
moting the  greatness  and  maintaining  the  safety 
of  nations."  He  concludes :  "For  my  own  part  I 
have  to  confess  that  I  find  it  beyond  my  capacity 
to  give  a  definition.  In  the  whole  history  of  con- 
flict, whether  by  downright  fighting,  or  competi- 
tion in  trade  on  the  sea,  I  find  but  two  nations  of 
which  it  can  be  said  that  they  could  be  great  only 
by  exercising  power  oversea,  and  that  so  long  as 
they  could  defeat  an  enemy  in  the  waters  round 
their  shores  they  were  safe  against  invasion. 
Even  as  regards  them  we  have  to  add  the  quali- 

'Pp.  247-8. 


120  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

fication  that  their  security  lasts  only  so  long  as 
they  do  not  possess  dominions  overseas  which 
are  subject  to  attack  by  formidable  assailants,  and 
across  land  frontiers." 

In  this  and  the  chapter  which  follows  an  at- 
tempt is  made  to  furnish  the  data  necessary  for  an 
answer  to  the  question  suggested  in  the  first  chap- 
ter of  this  book,  namely:  If  naval  power  has  not 
the  special  political  and  social  dangers  connected 
with  military  power,  may  not  the  Anglo-Saxons 
find  therein  a  means  of  extending  their  influence 
without  paying  the  moral  price  involved  in 
Prussianism  ? 

The  present  chapter  is  a  summary  of  the 
general  conclusions  of  authoritative  modern 
strategists  on  the  operation  of  sea  power  and  the 
relation  it  must  bear  to  military  power,  rather 
than  a  statement  of  personal  conclusions.  In  the 
chapter  that  follows,  however,  I  have  attempted 
to  bring  out  the  limitations  of  sea  power  which 
result  from  the  interdependence  of  land  and  sea 
forces,  and  the  outcome  of  that  on  international 
politics  as  illustrated  in  history. 

Sea  power  is  exercised  through  command  of 
the  sea,  which  is  the  object  of  naval  warfare.  By 
"the  command  of  the  sea"  is  meant: 

I.  That  the  state  obtaining  it  can  carry  on  its 
maritime  commerce  without  interruption  or  with 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         121 

only  slight  interruption  from  the  armed  ships  of 
the  enemy. 

2.  That  it  can  with  reasonable  safety  trans- 
port troops  overseas  for  the  purpose  of  attacking 
colonies   or   effecting  a   landing  in   the   enemy 
country  and  can  keep  these  troops  supplied  with 
such    reinforcements,    ammunition    and    provi- 
sions as  will  enable  them  to  prosecute  their  cam- 
paign. 

3.  That  portions  of  its  fleet  can  safely  be  used 
to  co-operate  with  land  forces  in  operations  on  an 
enemy  coast,  by  bombarding  coast  fortifications, 
covering    landing    parties,    and    dispersing   the 
enemy's  troops  by  its  fire. 

4.  That  it  can  prevent  the  enemy  state  from 
carrying  out  any  of  the  operations  coming  under 
heads  No.  2  and  3,  or  at  least  render  them  ex- 
tremely perilous  and  uncertain. 

5.  That  it  can  establish  an  effective  blockade 
of  his  chief  commercial  ports  and  thus  close  them 
to  all  commerce  whether  in  enemy  or  neutral 
bottoms  and  by  exercising  the  right  of  search 
can  prevent  him  from  receiving  from  overseas, 
through  any  port,  such  articles  as  are  classed  as 
contraband. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  command  of  the  sea 
is  in  the  first  place  a  defensive  weapon.  In  the 
hands  of  a  State  which  has  no  land  frontiers,  or 
none  which  adjoin  the  frontiers  of  the  enemy,  an 


122  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

invasion  of  its  territory  is  rendered  practically  im- 
possible. If  the  nation  possesses  a  great  foreign 
trade  it  is  enabled  to  carry  on  that  trade  even 
during  the  actual  period  of  war.  The  nation  is 
thus  saved  both  from  the  worst  ravages  of  war 
and  from  any  overwhelming  interruption  to  its 
industrial  and  commercial  life. 

For  purposes  of  direct  offensive,  the  value  of 
command  of  the  sea  depends  upon  the  military 
strength  of  the  nation  which  exercises  it,  but  as 
will  be  seen  later,  a  comparatively  small  military 
force  is  often  enabled  to  exercise  an  effect  dispro- 
portionate to  its  size.  In  the  long  run  naval  pre- 
dominance can  be  used  as  an  offensive  weapon 
only  if  there  is  a  strong  army  to  co-operate 
with  it.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  a 
power  which,  for  any  reason,  does  not  keep  up  a 
great  military  force  in  time  of  peace,  is  enabled 
by  command  of  the  sea  to  build  up  such  a  force 
after  the  declaration  of  war,  to  train  it,  to  manu- 
facture or  import  arms  and  equipment,  and  finally 
to  transport  it  to  the  scene  of  action  when  it  is 
ready  to  strike. 

Economic  pressure,  however,  which  is  an  in- 
direct method  of  offence,  can  be  exercised  by  the 
command  of  the  sea.  By  preventing  the  enemy 
from  receiving  material  of  war  it  weakens  his 
power  of  resistance  and  by  the  interruption  of 
his  trade  it  diminishes  his  financial  resources  for  a 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         123 

prolonged  war  and  it  may  also  inflict  such  injury 
upon  his  commercial  and  industrial  classes  as  will 
induce  them  to  put  internal  pressure  upon  the  gov- 
ernment to  make  peace.  This  power  to  exercise 
this  economic  pressure  often  renders  a  great  naval 
power,  even  if  its  army  be  comparatively  negli- 
gible, an  extremely  valuable  ally  to  a  military 
state. 

The  command  of  the  sea  may  be  either 
Absolute,  Virtual  or  Disputed. 

Absolute  command  of  the  sea  implies  either 
that  the  enemy  has  no  serious  naval  force  or  that 
his  naval  force  has  been  destroyed.  In  that  case 
all  the  advantages  mentioned  in  the  five  headings, 
with  which  we  started,  are  secured  to  the  naval 
power  in  full  possession.  In  the  South  African 
War  the  Boer  Republics  possessed  no  fleet  and 
Great  Britain  was  thus  enabled  to  transport  an 
overwhelming  force  to  the  scene  of  action  and  to 
bring  the  necessary  military  pressure  to  bear, 
while  her  commerce  went  on  without  any  inter- 
ference from  without. 

Virtual  command  of  the  sea  exists  where  the 
enemy's  naval  force,  being  in  inferior  strength, 
declines  to  put  to  sea ;  or  where  it  can  be  so  closely 
observed  by  the  superior  fleet  that  it  cannot  put 
to  sea  without  being  immediately  brought  to 
action  by  a  superior  force.  In  such  a  case  the 
shores  and  commerce  of  the  State  exercising  vir- 


124  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

tual  command  will  be  efficiently  protected,  while 
it  will  be  able  itself  to  conduct  overseas  opera- 
tions with  a  minimum  of  risk.  The  extent  of 
such  risk  will  depend  entirely  upon  the  degree  of 
certainty  which  can  be  established  that  the 
enemy's  force  will  not  get  to  sea.  After  Trafal- 
gar, Great  Britain  may  be  said  to  have  exercised 
virtual  command  of  the  sea  because  the  enemies' 
fleets  were  closely  watched  or  blockaded,  while 
their  reduction  in  strength  and  morale  rendered 
it  practically  useless  for  them  to  think  of  risking 
a  general  action  for  the  purpose  of  breaking  the 
blockade.  All  danger  of  invasion  passed  away, 
while  Great  Britain  was  enabled  to  land  and  sup- 
ply a  strong  army  in  the  Peninsula.  Again,  while 
isolated  cruisers  caused  much  damage  to  British 
Trade,  these  losses  were  not  sufficient  to  prevent 
that  trade  from  being  actively  and  profitably  car- 
ried on,  while  the  overseas  trade  of  France  was 
completely  ruined.  In  the  present  war,  though 
the  German  fleet  has  never  been  defeated  in  a 
great  battle,  Britain  has  from  the  first  exercised 
a  virtual  command.  The  reason  is  that  her 
superiority  in  capital  ships  is  very  great  and  her 
strength  in  cruisers,  coupled  with  her  geograph- 
ical position  in  regard  to  Germany,  render  it 
practically  certain  that  Britain  could  at  once 
throw  the  British  battle  squadrons  in  superior 
strength  across  the  path  of  the  German  fleet 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         125 

should  it  issue  from  its  ports.  Britain  has,  there- 
fore, been  able  to  land  a  large  force  in  France,  to 
keep  it  reinforced  and  supplied,  to  seize  German 
Colonies,  and  conduct  coastal  operations  in  Bel- 
gium and  the  Dardanelles.  Her  commerce  has 
suffered  certain  losses  from  cruisers  and  sub- 
marines, but  only  to  a  very  small  percentage  of 
its  total  volume,  while  her  control  of  the  ap- 
proaches to  the  German  coast  and  the  main  trade 
routes  has  driven  commerce  in  German  ships 
entirely  from  the  seas. 

The  command  of  the  sea  is  said  to  be  in  dis- 
pute when  neither  power  has  obtained  a  position 
of  naval  superiority.  In  this  case  neither  side 
will  be  able  to  exercise  the  advantages  of  com- 
mand. No  invasion  on  a  large  scale  will  be  pos- 
sible and  smaller  expeditions  will  be  very  danger- 
ous. The  danger  arises  not  only  from  the  possi- 
bility of  interruption  by  an  enemy  squadron  but 
also  from  the  fact  that  even  if  a  landing  be  safely 
effected  the  communications  of  the  expeditionary 
force  will  be  insecure.  It  cannot  receive  regular 
reinforcements  and  supplies,  and  if  the  enemy's 
fleet  should  subsequently  obtain  a  position  of 
superiority  by  winning  a  decisive  action,  the  in- 
vaders may  find  themselves  entirely  isolated  and 
be  compelled  to  surrender.  The  commerce  of 
both  parties  will  be  exposed  to  attack  and  heavy 
loss,  but  so  long  as  the  condition  of  disputed  com- 


126  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

mand  continues,  neither  will  be  able  to  undertake 
a  commercial  blockade  or  to  drive  its  rival's  flag 
from  the  seas. 

During  the  whole  war  of  American  Inde- 
pendence the  command  of  the  sea  may  be  said 
to  have  been  in  dispute.  While  the  allied  fleets 
were  numerically  superior  to  the  British,  they 
were  never  able  to  win  a  decisive  battle.  Their 
intervention  was  of  vital  importance  to  the  rebel- 
ling colonies,  because  it  prevented  the  British 
from  using  their  sea  power  to  isolate  and  reduce 
one  by  one  the  various  sections  of  the  narrow  and 
indented  Atlantic  coast  strip,  which  then  formed 
the  United  States.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  not 
sufficient  to  enable  France  and  Spain  to  invade 
the  British  Isles  or  to  transport  troops  in  suffi- 
cient numbers  to  overwhelm  the  British  armies 
in  America  or  undertake  any  great  expeditions. 
The  West  Indian  Islands  fell  into  the  hands  of 
one  side  or  the  other  according  to  the  temporary 
fluctuations  of  power.  As  a  net  result  the  United 
States  gained  their  independence  because  they 
were  on  the  defensive  and  a  disputed  command 
which  prevented  the  British  from  exercising  the 
full  pressure  of  seapower  was  sufficient  for  their 
purpose.  France  and  Spain,  on  the  other  hand, 
gained  very  little  because  the  war  for  them  was  an 
offensive  one  and  they  never  obtained  that  naval 
superiority  which  would  enable  them  to  take  the 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         127 

offensive  with  success  against  an  insular  and 
colonial  power. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Seven  Years'  War 
we  find  the  same  position  of  disputed  command, 
but  in  this  case  superior  strategy  and  the  great 
victories  of  Hawke  and  Boscawen  converted  the 
position  into  one  of  virtual  command  by  the 
British  Fleet,  which  enabled  Britain  to  strike 
down  the  French  power  in  India  and  Canada, 
while  the  protection  given  to  her  trade  so  estab- 
lished her  financial  position  that  she  could  finance 
Frederick  the  Great  in  the  continental  struggle. 

The  command  of  the  sea  may  also  be  said  to 
be  in  dispute  so  long  as  an  inferior  naval  power 
possesses  a  "fleet  in  being."  The  doctrine  of  the 
fleet  in  being  is  often  misunderstood.  We  have 
seen  that  if  an  inferior  fleet  can  be  observed  so 
closely  in  its  ports  that  it  cannot  put  to  sea  with- 
out avoiding  action,  the  superior  power  may  carry 
on  overseas  operations  without  regard  to  its  ex- 
istence, as  in  the  present  war.  But  if  the  margin 
of  superiority  is  so  small  as  to  render  victory 
uncertain,  or  if  the  inferior  fleet  retains  freedom 
of  action,  the  case  is  altered.  By  a  "fleet  in 
being"  we  mean  a  fleet  which  is  so  far  inferior  to 
its  opponent  that  it  will  not  seek  action  except  on 
favourable  terms,  but  which  retains  its  freedom 
of  movement  and  is  strong  enough  to  constitute 
a  serious  threat  to  overseas  operations.  Thus  in 


128  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

1690,  when  de  Tourville  was  in  the  Channel  with 
a  superior  force,  Torrington  wrote  to  the  Gov- 
ernment: "Whilst  we  observe  the  French,  they 
cannot  make  any  attempt  either  upon  ships  or 
shore  without  running  a  great  hazard."  He  did 
not  think  himself  strong  enough  to  fight  on  equal 
terms,  but  he  was  so  strong  that  the  French  could 
not  detach  ships  to  cover  military  operations 
without  giving  him  an  opportunity,  and  if  their 
main  fleet  encumbered  itself  with  transports  and 
the  covering  of  a  landing  he  could  attack  it  with 
advantage.  When  his  orders  compelled  him  to 
fight,  he  drew  off  with  as  little  loss  as  possible 
and  continued  to  observe  the  French  from  the 
Thames  estuary,  where  he  awaited  reinforce- 
ments. In  his  own  words:  "I  always  said  that, 
whilst  we  had  a  fleet  in  being,  they  would  not 
dare  to  make  an  attempt."  2 

The  extent  to  which  a  fleet  in  being  will  hamper 
the  movements  of  the  enemy  depends,  of  course, 
upon  the  estimate  which  they  form  of  its  fighting 
value.  Thus,  in  the  Chino- Japanese  War,  the 
Japanese  moved  troops  into  Korea  while  the 
Chinese  fleet  was  still  at  large,  undefeated.  But 
in  that  case  Admiral  Ito  had  satisfied  himself 
from  the  conduct  of  the  Chinese  that  their  squad- 

*In  1866  the  Italian  admiral,  Persano,  disregarding  the  in- 
ferior Austrian  fleet,  attempted  a  descent  upon  the  Island  of 
Lissa.  He  was  taken  at  advantage  by  Tegetthoff  and  disgrace- 
fully defeated. 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         129 

ron  would  not  be  handled  with  sufficient  energy 
or  skill  to  constitute  a  serious  threat. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  so  soon  as  an 
inferior  fleet  is  blockaded,  or  can  be  observed  so 
closely  that  it  cannot  put  to  sea  without  being 
brought  to  action  by  a  greatly  superior  force,  it 
ceases  to  be  "in  being"  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
term  is  here  used.  Thus  the  power  of  an  inferior 
fleet  to  affect  the  situation  depends  upon  its  ability 
to  evade  action  or  blockade,  hoping  for  some 
mistake  upon  the  part  of  the  enemy  which  will 
allow  it  to  fall  on  a  detached  portion  of  his  force, 
or  to  take  his  main  force  at  a  disadvantage. 

The  difficulties  of  an  inferior  fleet  are  greater 
than  those  of  an  inferior  army,  inasmuch  as  it 
cannot  compensate  for  numerical  weakness  by 
taking  up  a  strong  defensive  position.  It  can 
indeed  remain  under  the  protection  of  its  coast 
fortifications,  but  by  so  doing  it  abandons  the  seas 
to  its  adversary,  and  on  the  high  seas  there  are 
no  positions. 

It  is,  perhaps,  hardly  necessary  to  observe  that 
a  numerically  inferior  fleet  which  is  greatly 
superior  in  efficiency  to  its  opponents  may  possess 
a  real  superiority  in  striking  power.  The  ex- 
pression "superior  fleet"  here  used  implies  simply 
such  superiority  in  numbers,  or  type  of  ship,  or 
morale,  as  renders  defeat  of  the  enemy  reason- 
ably probable. 


130  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

In  the  main,  the  command  of  the  sea  is  one 
and  indivisible.  A  land  power,  attacked  on  two 
frontiers,  may  stand  on  the  defensive  on  one 
and  concentrate  superior  force  upon  the  other. 
The  unity  of  the  sea,  with  the  immense  facilities 
which  it  gives  for  concentration,  together  with 
the  absence  of  defensive  positions,  renders  any 
similar  plan  of  campaign  at  sea  impossible.  On 
the  high  seas  there  are  no  neutral  frontiers  to 
limit  operations,  no  natural  obstacles,  such  as 
mountains  and  rivers  present  on  land,  no  forti- 
fied lines,  and  consequently  no  positions  which 
cannot  be  turned.  The  containing  of  a  superior 
by  an  inferior  force  is  thus  impossible.  If  the 
inferior  fleet  concentrates  it  will  be  defeated  or 
blockaded  by  the  superior,  if  it  is  divided,  its 
detachments  can  be  followed  everywhere  and  de- 
stroyed in  detail. 

These  considerations  may  be  varied  in  certain 
cases  by  geographical  conditions.  In  the  present 
war  the  German  fleet  occupies  to  some  extent  the 
same  position  with  regard  to  the  Russian  as  the 
British  does  to  the  German.  This  is  due  to  the 
very  narrow  entrance  to  the  Baltic  Sea  and  the 
existence  of  the  Kaiser  Wilhelm  Canal.  In  the 
Russo-Japanese  War  the  Japanese  navy  was  in- 
ferior in  total  strength  to  the  Russian ;  but  after 
the  first  torpedo  attack  at  Port  Arthur  it  pos- 
sessed a  distinct  local  superiority,  while  the  rein- 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         131 

forcement  of  the  Russian  fleet  was  rendered 
difficult  by  the  great  length  of  the  voyage  and 
the  absence  of  coaling  stations.  The  Japanese 
were  thus  able  to  use  freely  the  local  command 
which  they  had  established  and,  finally,  Togo 
beat  the  Russian  reinforcements  at  Tsushima. 
Had  the  Russian  fleet  been  more  efficient  and  had 
they  possessed  a  good  base,  say  at  Singapore, 
where  the  fleet  could  have  refitted  after  its  voy- 
age, Togo's  victory  might  have  been  less  certain ; 
and  had  he  been  defeated,  the  Japanese  army, 
landed  in  Korea  by  virtue  of  their  temporary 
local  command,  would  have  found  its  communi- 
cations cut. 

In  the  war  of  American  Independence,  de 
Suffren,  the  great  French  admiral,  was  fast 
establishing,  not  so  much  by  superior  force  as  by 
superior  genius,  a  control  of  the  Indian  seas, 
which  might  have  seriously  shaken  the  British 
power  in  India  had  not  the  peace  of  Versailles 
intervened.  Here  too,  however,  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  a  decisive  British  victory  in  the 
main  theatre  of  war  would  have  enabled  them  to 
send  out  a  force  by  which  the  control  of  the  Indian 
seas  would  have  been  restored  to  them. 

The  value  of  superior  local  strength  depends 
upon  the  rapidity  with  which  the  enemy's  main 
force  can  be  brought  up,  and  the  character  of  the 
war.  Suppose  two  powers,  "A"  and  "B,"  are  at 


i32  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

war  for  a  limited  object,  say  the  occupation  of 
the  island  of  "C."  "A"  has  the  larger  navy,  but 
"B,"  being  nearer  to  "C"  than  "A,"  defeats  the 
"A"  squadron  in  those  waters  and  is  able  to 
transport  troops  to  "C,"  who  conquer  the  island. 
If  the  "A"  people  do  not  put  an  excessive  value 
on  "C"  they  may  be  disinclined  to  make  the  exer- 
tions necessary  for  its  recovery  and  will  make 
peace.  But  if  the  questions  at  issue  between  the 
two  nations  are  such  as  each  regards  as  of  vital 
importance,  then  "A"  will  put  forward  her  whole 
strength  and  send  out  a  superior  fleet  to  "C" 
waters.  In  that  case  the  "B"  troops  on  "C"  will 
be  lost. 

Having  examined  the  nature  and  meaning  of 
the  command  of  the  sea,  we  must  now  say  a  few 
words  with  regard  to  the  ways  in  which  that 
command  is  obtained  and  exercised. 

It  is  a  cardinal  principle  of  British  naval 
strategy  that  command  of  the  sea  can  only  be 
obtained  by  defeating  or  bottling  up  the  enemy's 
battle  squadrons.  In  Britain's  wars  with  France 
it  was  the  general  strategy  of  British  admirals 
to  bring  the  enemy's  fleet  to  action  upon  every 
possible  occasion.  The  French  policy  was  gener- 
ally directed  rather  to  ulterior  objects,  to  the 
taking  of  certain  islands,  or  the  safe  passage  of 
convoys.  In  the  words  of  a  French  officer :  "The 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         133 

French  navy  has  always  preferred  the  glory  of 
assuring  or  preserving  a  conquest  to  that,  more 
brilliant  perhaps,  but  actually  less  real,  of  taking 
a  few  ships."  In  consequence  they  evaded  action 
whenever  possible  and  relied  on  sudden  concen- 
trations of  force  to  cover  the  passage  of  troops. 
If  brought  to  action,  they  contented  themselves 
with  beating  off  the  enemy  so  as  to  cover  the 
immediate  military  operations  in  hand.  Thus 
d'Estaing,  having  achieved  a  success  over  Byron, 
refused  to  press  it  because  he  was  afraid  of  risk- 
ing the  island  of  Grenada,  which  he  had  con- 
quered and  which  he  regarded  as  the  real  object 
of  his  campaign.  In  1782  de  Grasse  neglected  a 
very  advantageous  opportunity  of  attacking  the 
British,  and  his  action  was  justified  by  a  Court 
Martial  as  "an  act  of  prudence  on  the  part  of  the 
admiral,  dictated  to  him  by  the  ulterior  projects 
of  the  cruise."  Three  days  later  he  was  attacked 
and  defeated  by  the  same  fleet  and  all  the  ulterior 
projects  of  the  cruise  were  lost.  By  continually 
hammering  at  the  enemy's  fleet  wherever  it  could 
be  found,  the  British  generally  ended  by  obtain- 
ing a  command  of  the  sea  which  enabled  them 
to  recover  anything  temporarily  gained  by  the 
French  and  to  gather  in  all  secondary  objectives 
at  their  leisure. 

So  with  the  various  projects  for  the  invasion 
of  the  British  Isles.     If  the  French  could  only 


i34  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

have  defeated  the  British  fleet,  or  driven  it  into 
its  ports,  they  might  have  thrown  an  army  across 
the  Channel.  Instead  of  attempting  to  do  this 
they  generally  relied  upon  a  temporary  concen- 
tration of  force  to  cover  a  landing,  evading  the 
British  fleet  wherever  possible.  Their  elaborate 
plans  invariably  failed  because  the  whole  British 
strategy  was  directed  to  maintaining  touch  with 
every  squadron  that  put  to  sea  and  bringing  it 
to  action.  One  or  more  of  the  squadrons  destined 
to  cover  the  crossing  was  invariably  run  down 
and  defeated  and  the  whole  scheme  collapsed. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  the  British  army  was 
sent  to  Spain,  it  arrived  without  interruption, 
not  because  it  was  accompanied  by  a  great  cover- 
ing force,  but  because  successive  defeats  had 
shattered  the  material  and  moral  strength  of  the 
French  navy  and  its  remaining  squadrons  were 
all  masked  by  superior  forces. 

The  masking  of  French  fleets  by  the  British 
has  sometimes  led  to  a  certain  confusion  in  terms. 
The  "blockade"  of  the  French  fleets  was  not  in 
general  a  blockade  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term. 
It  was  not  desired  to  prevent  the  egress  of  the 
French  squadrons ;  indeed,  every  effort  was  made 
to  tempt  them  out.  The  one  object  was  to  ensure 
that  they  should  never  come  out  without  being 
fought  with.  The  mainspring  of  the  whole 
strategy  was  the  desire  to  bring  the  enemy's  fleet 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         135 

to  action.  It  resulted,  of  course,  in  condemning 
him  to  inaction  if  he  was  unable  or  unwilling  to 
fight,  with  the  result  that  the  French  fleets 
diminished  in  morale  and  seamanship  to  an  extent 
which  greatly  reduced  their  activities  when  they 
did  manage  to  slip  through. 

It  follows  from  this  policy  of  concentration 
upon  the  organised  forces  of  the  enemy  afloat  that 
the  mainstay  of  naval  strength  is  the  capital  ship 
— the  ship  which  in  the  old  phrase  is  "fit  to  lie  in 
a  line"  and,  as  these  ships  are  expensive  and  can- 
not be  improvised,  it  results  in  the  necessity  for 
a  power  desirous  of  obtaining  command  of  the 
sea  in  war,  to  prepare  for  war  by  a  free  expendi- 
ture of  the  national  resources  upon  its  battle 
fleet.  A  further  result  is  seen  in  the  disposition 
of  the  fleets.  While  the  points  to  be  protected 
may  be  numerous  and  scattered,  sound  strategy 
dictates  that  the  fleet  which  is  to  protect  them 
should  be  concentrated  within  striking  distance  of 
the  enemy's  ports.  The  British  Empire  could 
not  be  protected  by  a  series  of  local  squadrons 
based  on  India,  on  Canada,  on  Australia.  Since 
it  would  be  impossible  to  tell  where  the  blow  was 
to  fall,  such  squadrons  might  well  be  evaded  or 
overwhelmed  in  detail.  But  if  the  British  main 
fleet  is  concentrated  off  the  enemy's  ports,  or  at 
a  rendezvous  within  striking  distance  of  them, 
with  scouts  closely  observing  every  movement  on 


136  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  enemy's  coast,  then  any  expedition  destined 
against  India,  or  Canada,  or  Australia,  can  be 
located  and  destroyed  at  its  point  of  departure 
and  the  only  means  by  which  its  departure  could 
be  protected  would  be  for  the  enemy  to  fight  and 
defeat  the  British  fleet. 

The  possibilities  of  evasion  have  been  consider- 
ably overrated  even  in  the  case  of  the  sailing  ship. 
There  was  a  good  deal  of  loose  talk  about 
Villeneuve  "luring  Nelson  away"  to  the  West 
Indies.  Nelson  was  never  "lured  away."  His 
place  was  on  the  heels  of  Villeneuve,  whether  in 
the  Mediterranean  or  the  West  Indies.  While 
he  was  on  his  heels  Villeneuve  could  do  nothing. 
He  could  only  have  rendered  his  squadron  avail- 
able for  covering  a  crossing  by  falling  upon 
Nelson  and  defeating  him.  Napoleon's  scheme 
for  the  invasion  of  England  was  not  destroyed 
at  Trafalgar.  Trafalgar  was  only  an  epilogue. 
Napoleon's  plan  presupposed  an  overwhelming 
concentration  in  the  Channel  and  it  broke  down 
because  the  masterly  dispositions  of  the  British 
fleet  made  it  impossible  for  the  French  to  get  to 
the  Channel  without  fighting. 

It  is  true  that  in  1798  Napoleon  succeeded  in 
carrying  his  army  to  Egypt  by  evasion,  owing  to 
the  fact  that  Nelson  was  insufficiently  supplied 
with  frigates  for  scouting.  But  the  sequel  is 
instructive.  Nelson  found  the  French  fleet  at 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         137 

Aboukir  and  crushed  it.  England  obtained  com- 
mand of  the  Mediterranean.  It  was  impossible 
for  the  French  to  receive  reinforcements  or  sup- 
plies from  home.  The  co-operation  of  the  British 
fleet  checked  Napoleon  at  Acre.  He  recognised 
that  the  game  was  up  and  returned  home.  A 
British  army  was  landed  in  Egypt  and  the  French 
were  forced  to  capitulate. 

Advocates  of  local  squadrons  and  defences 
sometimes  contend  that  the  British  fleet  must 
remain  in  British  waters  to  protect  the  British 
Isles  and  that  therefore  it  is  not  available  for  the 
defence,  say,  of  Canada.  The  non  sequitur  is 
complete.  If  the  enemy's  organised  force  is  in 
European  waters,  the  British  fleet  will  protect 
Canada  by  being  there  too.  Until  it  is  defeated  no 
great  expedition  can  leave  the  enemy's  ports.  If 
the  enemy's  fleet  has  gone  to  Canadian  waters 
the  British  fleet  will  protect  Britain  by  following 
and  defeating  it  there. 

Those  who  talk  of  sudden  raids  protected  only 
by  a  few  fast  cruisers  have  never  considered  the 
position  of  a  crowd  of  transports,  all  intensely 
vulnerable,  liable  at  any  moment  to  be  overtaken 
by  a  superior  force,  or  the  length  of  time  neces- 
sary for  disembarkation. 

The  inventions  of  modern  science,  steam,  and 
wireless  telegraph  all  go  to  increase  the  difficul- 
ties of  invasion.  The  speed  of  each  side  may  be 


138  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

increased  in  equal  proportion,  but  all  the  advan- 
tages given  by  greater  certainty  and  by  greater 
rapidity  of  communication  are  on  the  side  of  the 
force  which  desires  to  keep  in  touch  with  the 
enemy  and  against  the  force  which  relies  on 
chance  and  evasion. 

The  same  principle  applies  to  the  attack  and 
defence  of  commerce.  No  superiority  of  strength 
can  prevent  occasional  scattered  cruisers  from 
slipping  through  and  working  havoc,  but  such  de- 
struction of  commerce  will  never  bring  a  powerful 
nation  to  its  knees.  The  cruisers  dare  not  lie  long 
on  the  main  trade  routes  or  they  will  be  hunted 
down  by  superior  force.  The  bases  open  to  them 
will  continually  diminish  as  the  command  of  the 
sea  enables  the  superior  power  to  capture  the 
overseas  possessions  of  its  enemy.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  a  fleet  has  defeated  the  enemy's  battle 
squadrons  or  bottled  them  up  in  their  ports  it  can 
so  dispose  its  cruisers  and  so  stiffen  them  with 
powerful  vessels,  as  to  close  the  main  trade  routes 
altogether  to  the  enemy's  commerce;  or  by  the 
establishment  of  a  commercial  blockade  can  bring 
still  more  powerful  economic  pressure  to  bear. 

The  difference  of  result  between  sporadic  com- 
merce-destroying and  the  economic  pressure  exer- 
cised by  a  fleet  possessing  command  of  the  seas 
was  very  clearly  shown  in  the  Revolutionary  and 
Napoleonic  Wars,  The  defeat  of  their  battle 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         139 

squadrons  induced  the  French  to  put  a  very  great 
part  of  their  energies  into  commerce-destruction 
and  the  actual  British  losses  were  heavy.  Yet 
they  did  not  exceed  some  two  or  two  and  one-half 
per  cent  of  the  total  volume  of  commerce.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  French  overseas  trade  became 
dependent  upon  some  form  of  smuggling  by 
foreigners,  and  if  a  ship  put  into  Calais  crowds 
turned  out  to  witness  the  strange  sight. 

An  apparent  exception  to  the  inefficiency  of 
mere  raiding  has  been  found  in  the  disappearance 
of  American  shipping  as  a  result  of  the  Con- 
federate depredations.  The  answer  is  two-fold. 
The  transfer  of  trade  was  caused  largely  by  the 
fact  that  steam  was  just  supplanting  sail,  and 
iron  vessels  replacing  wooden  ones.  The  United 
States  fell  behind  in  the  competition  because  her 
whole  energies  were  absorbed  by  the  war,  of  which 
the  Confederate  commerce-destroying  was  only 
an  incident.  Moreover,  the  success  of  the 
Alabama  and  her  consorts  was  almost  entirely 
due  to  the  defective  dispositions  of  the  Northern 
Admiralty.  A  dozen  cruisers  stationed  at  the 
controlling  points  of  the  great  trade  routes  would 
have  saved  nine  tenths  of  the  damage. 

In  the  present  day  the  lot  of  the  raiding 
cruiser  is  harder  than  ever,  partly  because  wire- 
less telegraphy  renders  it  easier  to  locate  her, 
mainly  because  of  her  absolute  dependence  upon 


I4o  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

coal  supply.  The  coaling  stations  of  the  weaker 
naval  power  soon  disappear,  the  supply  which  can 
be  obtained  from  neutrals  is  restricted.  Every 
time  a  cruiser  puts  into  port  she  can  be  located. 

It  is  this  strategical  ineffectiveness  of  sporadic 
commerce-destruction,  coupled  with  the  effective 
pressure  which  a  navy  which  has  obtained 
command  of  the  sea  can  exercise  by  blockade 
and  by  control  of  the  trade  routes,  which  has 
given  rise  to  the  tendency  on  the  part  of  the 
more  powerful  naval  states  to  stand  out  for  ex- 
tended belligerent  rights.  Great  Britain  in  the 
Napoleonic  wars  and  to-day,  and  the  United 
States  in  the  Civil  War,  put  belligerent  rights 
high,  because  the  higher  they  are,  the  more 
pressure  can  be  exercised  by  the  superior  naval 
power. 

A  fleet  cannot,  generally  speaking,  exercise 
direct  military  pressure.  The  defeat  of  the 
Spanish  Armada  freed  England  from  the  fear  of 
invasion,  but  the  war  lingered  on  more  or  less 
ineffectively  for  fifteen  years  because  there  was 
no  army  capable  of  backing  up  the  blows  of  the 
fleet.  In  general  the  policy  of  Great  Britain  has 
been  a  division  of  labour.  She  has  devoted  her- 
self mainly  to  securing  the  command  of  the  sea, 
leaving  to  allies,  financed  by  her,  the  main  mili- 
tary operations.  To  provide  at  once  a  great  fleet 
and  a  great  army  has  generally  proved  too  hard 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         141 

a  task.  Moreover,  while  the  naval  predominance 
of  an  insular  power  may  be  borne,  since  its  offen- 
sive force  depends  so  largely  upon  co-operation 
with  others,  the  conjunction  of  predominant  naval 
power  with  great  military  strength  in  one  nation 
might  drive  all  other  states  into  alliance  against 
it.  What  the  navy  can  do  is  to  secure  time 
for  the  creation  of  an  emergency  army  when 
required.  The  present  war  gives  a  striking  in- 
stance. An  illustration  on  a  smaller  scale  was 
given  in  the  very  instructive  Chilean  Civil  War  of 
1891.  The  army  held  by  the  government.  The 
fleet  declared  for  the  rebels.  The  long  coast 
line  with  few  lateral  railways  and  great  patches 
of  desert  rendered  command  of  the  sea  the  decid- 
ing factor.  The  Congressionalists  imported  arms 
from  abroad,  trained  and  equipped  an  army  in 
the  North  and  then  transported  it  to  within  strik- 
ing distance  of  the  capital. 

Moreover,  the  unlimited  power  of  transporta- 
tion given  by  command  of  the  sea  has  often  ren- 
dered a  comparatively  small  force  able  to 
neutralise  much  greater  numbers.  In  the  Seven 
Years'  War,  when  Pitt  put  eighteen  thousand 
men  into  transports  in  the  Solent,  the  move- 
ments of  over  one  hundred  thousand  French 
troops  were  affected,  because  it  was  impossible  to 
tell  at  what  point  the  blow  would  fall.  The  ex- 
tent to  which  this  advantage  can  be  reaped  de- 


142  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

pends,  of  course,  upon  the  length  of  the  enemy's 
coast  line,  the  number  of  good  landing  places  and 
the  rapidity  with  which  his  troops  can  be  con- 
centrated by  road  or  rail. 

Another  military  advantage  of  sea  power  lies 
in  the  easy  and  unassailable  communications 
given  to  troops  who  can  keep  in  touch  with  a  sea 
commanded  by  their  fleet.  Further,  their  retreat 
is  secured.  When  Moore  with  his  small  army 
cut  across  Napoleon's  communications  and  drew 
upon  himself  the  whole  force  of  the  French  in 
Spain,  he  did  so  in  the  security  afforded  by  his 
knowledge  that  if  forced  to  retreat  to  the  coast  he 
would  find  his  transports  waiting  for  him. 

Direct  action  by  the  fleet  against  coast  fortifi- 
cations is  generally  of  doubtful  value.  To  silence 
guns  on  shore  it  is  generally  necessary  for  each 
gun  to  be  hit ;  the  whole  battery  of  a  ship  may  be 
lost  by  a  shot  on  her  waterline  or  in  her  engine 
room.  She  is  peculiarly  vulnerable  to  high  angle 
fire  or  to  plunging  fire.  The  damage  done  to 
earthworks  is  very  difficult  to  estimate  and  a  fort, 
apparently  silenced,  can  speedily  be  refitted  un- 
less occupied  by  a  landing  party.  Where  a  fort 
is  obsolescent  and  is  attacked  by  powerful  ships, 
so  that  its  guns  are  outranged,  success  may  be 
obtained;  but,  providing  forts  have  been  kept  up 
to  date  in  design  and  armament,  the  ship  will 
always  be  at  a  disadvantage.  Kiel  would  be  a 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         143 

different  proposition  to  the  Dardanelles.  It  is 
significant  that  at  Port  Arthur  and  again  at 
Tsingtau  the  Japanese  confined  themselves  to  a 
long  range  bombardment  which  did  not  risk  their 
ships  but  could  not  be  decisive.  The  real  work 
of  their  fleet  was  to  convey  and  supply  the  army 
by  which  the  fortress  was  reduced. 

The  power  of  ships  to  run  past  forts  has,  more- 
ever,  been  limited  by  the  development  of  the  mine. 
It  is  perhaps  the  chief  modification  of  naval  war 
which  the  mine  has  worked.  Its  value  for  coastal 
defence,  however,  may  be  exaggerated.  Unless 
protected  by  fortifications  a  mine  field  can  be 
destroyed.  If  the  fortifications  are  there  the 
mine  field  is  generally  superfluous.  Its  one  un- 
doubted use  is  to  prevent  vessels  running  past 
forts  situated  at  the  entrance  to  a  strait,  without 
reducing  the  works. 

The  sowing  of  mines  on  the  high  seas — apart 
from  the  question  of  its  humanity — will  only  be 
largely  resorted  to  by  a  power  which  scarcely 
hopes  to  win  command  of  the  sea.  The  automatic 
mine  is  as  dangerous  to  friends  as  to  foes.  While 
it  may  cause  annoyance  and  loss,  it  will  never 
decide  a  war.  Sweeping  operations  can  only  be 
prevented  by  the  defeat  of  the  fleet  which  covers 
them.  A  mine  field  on  the  high  seas  can  only 
partially  and  temporarily  hamper  the  movements 
of  the  superior  fleet  while  it  restricts  the  oppor- 


144  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

tunities  for  evasion  and  surprise  which  might 
have  accrued  to  the  inferior. 

Of  the  influence  of  the  submarine  it  is  perhaps 
too  early  to  speak,  since  it  is  still  in  a  state  of 
development.  So  far  it  never  appears  to  have 
scored  a  success  against  a  vessel  in  rapid  move- 
ment or  accompanied  by  destroyers.  Its  total 
failure  to  interfere  with  the  transport  of  troops 
and  stores  is  a  significant  mark  of  its  present 
limitations. 

We  have  now  discussed  the  nature  of  sea  power 
and  the  manner  in  which  it  is  exercised.  It  re- 
mains to  consider  very  briefly  certain  influences 
it  has  exercised  in  the  development  of  nations. 

It  may  be  said  in  general  that  sustained  national 
effort  will  always  be  associated  with  real  or  pre- 
sumed national  needs.  A  military  government, 
such  as  that  of  Louis  XIV,  may  for  a  time  create 
a  great  fleet  for  the  purpose  of  aiding  military 
operations ;  but  in  the  long  run  sea  power  implies 
an  extensive  maritime  commerce  to  be  protected 
from  attack,  an  extensive  coast  line  to  be  pro- 
tected against  overseas  invasion  or  distant  colo- 
nies with  which  communication  must  be  kept. 

The  ancient  Greeks,  especially  the  Athenians, 
with  their  propensity  to  commerce  and  colonisa- 
tion, early  learned  the  advantages  of  sea  power 
and  many  of  the  decisive  battles  in  the  history 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         145 

of  Athens  were  fought  at  sea.  Carthage,  as 
a  great  commercial  and  colonising  state,  de- 
veloped a  high  degree  of  maritime  power.  When 
she  came  into  conflict  with  Rome,  the  Romans, 
who  had  at  that  time  few  oversea  interests 
and  no  fleet,  found  themselves  compelled  to 
build  up  a  navy  in  order  to  protect  the  Italian 
coast  and  secure  communications  with  Sicily.  In 
the  Second  Punic  War  they  seem  to  have  acquired 
a  command  of  the  Mediterranean  which  com- 
pelled Hannibal  to  undertake  the  long  land  route 
from  Spain,  involving  the  crossing  of  the  Alps, 
by  which  he  gained  fame  but  fearfully  diminished 
his  army.  It  was  the  Roman  control  of  the  sea 
which  rendered  it  impossible  for  him  to  receive 
reinforcements  direct  from  Carthage,  while  it 
allowed  the  Romans  to  strike  at  the  heart  of  their 
enemy.  With  a  Carthaginian  command  of  the 
Mediterranean  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  Rome 
would  have  been  crushed. 

It  is,  however,  with  the  development  of  the 
sailing  ship  which  enabled  fleets  to  keep  the  sea 
in  all  weathers  and  for  long  periods  that  the  great 
development  of  sea  power  began,  and  its  opera- 
tions can  be  illustrated  mainly  by  the  case  of 
England. 

In  the  case  of  England  every  requisite  for  the 
development  of  naval  power  existed.  She  was 
insular,  and  thus  could  be  preserved  from  inva- 


146  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

sion  by  command  of  the  sea.  Her  people  have 
shown  a  natural  aptitude  for  maritime  trade  and 
colonisation.  She  has  always  had  a  large  sea- 
faring population. 

The  struggle  with  Spain  saw  the  English  com- 
pelled to  develop  their  seapower  (a)  for  the  pur- 
pose of  breaking  through  the  attempted  exclu- 
sion of  their  traders  from  the  Indies,  (b)  for 
defence  against  invasion  by  the  powerful  and  ex- 
perienced Spanish  army.  The  defeat  of  the 
Armada  secured  England  against  invasion;  the 
supremacy  established  by  her  sailors  enabled  her 
to  force  her  way  into  the  Indies.  The  real  work 
of  Drake  is  not  to  be  found  in  his  capture  of 
Spanish  treasure,  but  in  his  armed  penetration 
of  the  great  new  trade  routes  and  his  establish- 
ment of  commercial  treaties  in  the  Far  East. 

The  sea  power  of  Holland  was  one  of  the  de- 
cisive factors  in  the  attainment  of  her  liberty 
by  cutting  the  communications  of  the  Spanish 
troops.  Under  its  cover  she  founded  her  colonies 
and  developed  her  trade.  These  developments 
brought  her  into  conflict  with  England,  a  conflict 
ended  not  so  much  by  the  defeat  as  by  the  ex- 
haustion of  the  smaller  nation.  The  ruin  of  her 
sea  power  was  consummated  by  the  necessity  for 
military  effort  against  France  imposed  by  her 
land  frontier,  while  England,  even  during  her 
participation  in  the  Continental  wars,  was  enabled 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         147 

to  take  as  much  or  as  little  share  of  the  land 
warfare  as  she  desired  and  reserve  her  main 
effort  for  the  seas. 

In  the  Wars  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  the 
French  and  Spanish  Colonies  in  America  and 
India  fell  one  by  one  into  the  hands  of  the  power 
which  was  able  to  gain  command  of  the  seas, 
while  the  happy  genius  of  the  English  for  colo- 
nisation enabled  them  to  develop  these  colonies 
into  fresh  sources  of  trade  and  to  plant  strong 
communities  whose  resources  afforded  admirable 
bases  for  the  British  squadrons.  Thus  the 
colonies  acquired  by  the  exercise  of  sea  power, 
in  their  turn,  contributed  to  its  development. 

It  is,  perhaps,  in  the  great  Napoleonic  struggle 
that  sea  power  finds  its  fullest  illustration.  While 
the  French  armies  overran  the  whole  of  Conti- 
nental Europe  their  power  stopped  short  at  the 
coasts.  While  the  rest  of  Europe  was  disorgan- 
ised by  perpetual  warfare  and  France  herself 
exhausted  by  the  drain  of  conscription,  Great 
Britain,  undisturbed  by  the  invader,  was  able  to 
take  advantage  of  the  inventions  of  Watt  and 
Arkwright  to  accomplish  the  great  industrial 
revolution  to  carry  her  commerce  and  her  carry- 
ing trade  all  over  the  world.  It  is  not  true  to 
say  that  the  great  development  of  British  industry 
and  commerce  was  due  to  sea  power  and  the  war. 
It  arose  from  economic  causes  with  which  the 


i48  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

war  had  nothing  to  do.  But  that  it  was  developed 
in  spite  of  the  war  was  due  to  the  protection 
afforded  by  the  Command  of  the  Sea.  The  actual 
prosperity  of  England  was  not  due  to  sea  power ; 
her  relative  prosperity  as  compared  with  the 
general  exhaustion  of  Europe  was. 

This  prosperity  it  was  which  enabled  her  to 
subsidise  coalition  after  coalition  against  Napo- 
leon. The  knowledge  of  this  fact  and  the  steady 
economic  pressure  of  the  fleet  forced  him  into 
one  desperate  measure  after  another  with  a  view 
to  excluding  British  trade  from  the  Continent, 
and  was  finally  responsible  for  the  quarrel  with 
Russia  which  led  to  the  downfall  of  his  empire. 
English  gold  and  English  troops,  operating  by 
virtue  of  sea  power,  maintained  the  struggle  in 
the  Peninsula  which  drained  so  heavily  the  re- 
sources of  the  French  army. 

Finally,  a  growing  view  as  to  the  extent  to 
which  modern  naval  strategy  has  suffered  modi- 
fications for  which  the  classical  authorities  like 
those  just  summarised  had  not  prepared  us  is 
perhaps  fairly  indicated  in  the  following: 

"We  have  witnessed  the  development  of  an  un- 
suspected power  of  the  defensive  at  sea.  The 
mine  has  made  it  possible  to  fortify  the  waters, 
and  great  invisible  lines  of  obstacles  stretch  across 
the  waves,  fulfilling  the  same  functions  as  the 


MECHANISM  OF  SEA  POWER         149 

trenches  of  the  Aisne  on  land.  It  seems  to  be 
impossible  to  bring  an  unwilling  enemy  to  a  gen- 
eral engagement.  It  is  equally  impossible  to  im- 
pose a  formal  blockade,  though  the  extension  of 
the  doctrine  of  conditional  contraband  serves 
something  of  the  same  purpose  in  limiting  the 
services  which  neutrals  may  bring  to  an  enemy. 
The  submarine  has  limited  the  activity  of  capital 
ships,  nor  is  it  easy  to-day  to  imagine  a  successful 
landing  on  a  coast  provided  with  the  modern 
defences.  The  power  of  a  crushing  offensive 
seems  to  have  weakened,  and  the  notion  of  decid- 
ing a  war  by  a  naval  battle  to  have  vanished. 
What  remains  is  an  enhanced  power  of  slow 
pressure,  and  an  ability  to  penalise  commerce, 
which  steam  and  wireless  telegraphy  have  greatly 
reinforced.  The  seas  may  never  again  see  the 
spectacle  of  a  modern  Trafalgar.  But  the  basis 
of  Mahan's  argument  remains.  Sea  power  is 
still  a  condition  of  successful  warfare  on  a  world- 
wide theatre,  and  it  is  still  the  basis  of  world- 
empire." 


CHAPTER  V 
SOME  LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER 


Is  the  assumption  that  by  enlarging  the  belligerent 
rights  of  sea  war  we  shall  ensure  the  predominance  of 
the  non-military,  Anglo-Saxon  type  of  Liberal  society,  as 
against  the  continental  military  authoritative  form,  a  valid 
assumption?  The  evidence  seems  against  it.  Sea  power 
being  increasingly  dependent  upon  military  alliances  for 
the  exercise  of  world  influence  is  unable  to  pick  and 
choose  as  to  the  character  of  the  nation  it  supports,  as 
the  boxing  of  the  compass  by  a  nation  like  England  in 
her  alliances  has  proved.  The  present  war  is  repeating 
and  illustrating  what  past  combinations  have  abundantly 
shown. 


CHAPTER  V 
SOME  LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER 

"f  •  AHE  truth  is  that  back  of  all  the  technical  discussion 
?•  which  surrounds  the  subject,  beyond  all  the  his- 
torical considerations  which  can  be  adduced,  lies  one  all- 
important  question :  Whether  Anglo-Saxon  domination  of 
the  sea  is  to  persist.  For  centuries  the  origin  of  the 
glory  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  has  lain  in  its  sea  power. 
Is  that  power  to  continue  or  to  vanish?  And  what 
interest  have  we  Americans  in  that  great  question?  To 
state  the  problem  is  to  answer  it.  Every  triumph  of 
Anglo-Saxon  sea  power,  every  magnifying  of  that  power 
by  the  operations  of  the  Order  in  Council  which  we 
have  analyzed,  is  a  weapon  wrought  for  the  hand  of  the 
United  States. 

"Should  the  East  ever  menace  the  coast  of  California, 
shall  we  Americans  look  out  upon  an  ocean  on  which 
ride  the  fleets  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States,  or 
shall  we  face  alone  an  open  sea?  For  centuries  England 
has  ruled  by  her  sea  power.  In  1861  the  sea  power  of 
the  North  was  not  the  least  of  the  forces  under  which 
the  South  was  crushed.  Are  there  any  who  would  pro- 
pose for  us  under  the  name  of  'neutralisation  of  sea 
power'  the  fate  of  Belgium?  Or  shall  we  be  mindful 
of  the  words  of  that  great  American,  whose  fame  stands 
so  far  higher  in  Europe  than  in  our  own  country,  the 
name  of  Admiral  Mahan? 

"But  the  great  thing  is  that  if  Anglo-Saxon  sea  power 


154  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

continue  to  dominate  the  sea,  if  this  nation  stand  firm  in 
the  protection  of  its  commerce,  if  it  remember  that  any 
blow  to  the  high  dignity  of  sea  power  is  a  blow  aimed 
at  our  future  national  existence,  then  the  menace  which 
so  many  thinking  men  of  Europe  see  lying  across  the 
path  of  the  United  States  will  vanish  from  our  future. 
The  spectacle  of  a  Germany  whose  commerce  and  whose 
economic  life  is  held  in  iron  grip  by  Anglo-Saxon  sea 
power  will  forever  warn  an  island  empire  of  the  fate 
which  the  challenging  of  that  sea  power  will  hold. 

"Back  of  the  Order  in  Council,  back  of  the  acquies- 
cence of  the  United  States  in  that  order,  lies  the  recog- 
nition of  sea  power,  lies  reverence  for  the  wisdom  and 
foresight  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  lies  perhaps  the  future 
destiny  of  the  United  States." 

Thus  a  "Prominent  American  Lawyer"  writ- 
ing on  the  subject  of  International  Law  and  its 
relation  to  the  United  States.1 

The  major  assumptions  which  he  makes  are 
usually  regarded  almost  as  axioms  in  the  discus- 
sions of  this  subject. 

What  is  their  validity? 

How  will  the  enlargement  of  neutral  right 
affect  the  international  position  of  the  United 
States,  the  survival  of  Anglo-Saxon  civilisation 
in  its  struggle  with  rival  forms,  in  such  possible 
future  collisions  as  that  in  which  it  is  now  en- 
gaged? Should  we  not  by  limiting  the  effective- 
ness of  sea  control  give  relatively  greater  influ- 

lNew  York  Times,  May  16, 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        155 

ence  into  the  hands  of  militarist  land  powers? 
If,  as  indicated  in  the  first  chapter  of  this  book, 
"marinism,"  that  is  to  say,  the  possession  of  great 
naval  force,  does  not  involve  on  the  part  of  the 
nation  developing  it  the  peculiar  social  and  moral 
dangers  that  does  "militarism,"  should  we  not  by 
hampering  naval  power  throw  the  development  of 
civilisation  rather  under  the  influence  of  the  more 
mischievous  form  of  armed  power?  Ought  not 
America  to  tolerate  whatever  disadvantages  may 
belong  to  a  situation  like  that  which  has  arisen  in 
the  present  war  and  to  make  some  sacrifice  for 
the  purpose  of  contributing  to  the  strength  and 
influence  of  that  particular  form  of  civilisation 
of  which  she  is  a  part  ? 

Such  are  perhaps  the  first  questions  which 
an  Anglo-Saxon  is  apt  to  raise  in  the  discussion 
of  sea  power.  But  it  is  necessary  again  and 
again  to  point  out  that  the  project  outlined  in 
the  first  chapter  of  this  book  does  not  involve  the 
limitation  of  belligerent  right  at  sea,  as  against 
neutral  right.  It  amounts  indeed  to  a  proposal  to 
increase  belligerent  power  by  the  voluntary  trans- 
fer from  the  neutral  of  his  existing  rights  in 
return  for  a  more  effective  defence  of  his  perma- 
nent interests  by  the  increased  power  so  created, 
in  which  power  he  would  have  some  measure  of 
control.  Or  put  it  this  way:  The  process  of 
internationalisation  would  not  limit  sea  power 


156  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

but  transfer  the  control  of  its  operation  in  so  far 
as  that  operation  acted  through  economic  coer- 
cion. So  long  as  the  belligerent,  using  sea  power, 
represented  in  his  final  political  object  the  general 
will  of  the  community  of  nations,  the  internation- 
alisation  of  his  instrument  would  add  greatly  to 
its  force.  Throughout  this  discussion  it  will  be 
necessary  for  the  reader  to  keep  this  fact  well  in 
mind :  The  suggestion  here  made  is  that  sea  power 
should  be  rendered  more  effective  by  the  free  co- 
operation of  "neutrals,"  who  give  that  co-opera- 
tion because  the  coercion  is  being  exercised  on 
behalf  of  their  ultimate  interest  duly  protected 
by  arrangement.  Only  in  the  event  of  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  power  challenging  the  general  will  of  the 
nations  would  it  find  itself  hampered  by  this  re- 
adjustment of  "neutral"  position. 

In  other  words,  the  alternative  we  are  con- 
sidering is  not  as  between  the  effectiveness  of  sea 
power  and  its  limitation,  but  as  between  its  inter- 
nationalisation,  and  its  arbitrary  exercise  by  any 
nation  that  by  any  means  can  become  predominant 
at  sea. 

Indeed,  the  difference  of  principle  between  the 
two  courses  is  that  which  gives  to  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  great  powers  two  rival  tendencies, 
that  which  divides  the  alternating  policies  of 
English  statecraft:  the  Balance  of  Power  as  op- 
posed to  the  European  Concert.  Both  these  poli- 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        157 

cies  may  be  defensive  in  motive,  but  they  are 
separated  by  this  radical  difference.  The  partisan 
of  the  Balance  of  Power  says  to  his  prospective 
rival :  "You  cannot  attack  my  group  because  it  is 
as  strong  if  not  stronger  than  yours.  Therefore 
it  is  out  of  the  question  for  you  to  carry  out  your 
policy  against  our  interest." 

The  partisan  of  the  Concert,  on  the  contrary, 
says  to  his  prospective  rival :  "We  don't  ask  your 
group  to  submit  to  our  preponderant  power  be- 
cause we  should  not  be  content  to  submit  to  yours. 
But  let  us  all  combine  for  such  objects  as  we  have 
in  common.  Instead  of  three  nations  adjusting 
their  differences  on  one  side  and  three  on  the 
other,  let  the  adjustments  be  as  between  the  six." 

The  Balance  of  Power  policy  is  bound  ulti- 
mately to  fail  because  "two  can  play  at  that 
game."  If  we  found  ourselves  faced  by  a  com- 
bination which  was  as  strong  if  not  stronger  than 
ourselves  we  should  not  regard  that  as  a  safe 
position,  and,  as  a  matter  of  self-defence,  of 
protecting  our  political  interests,  our  diplomatic 
position  in  any  international  negotiations  that 
might  come  up,  we  should  try  to  become 
stronger.  Military  power  being  at  best  an  un- 
certain quantity,  it  is  as  well  to  be  on  the  safe 
side.  So  that  the  method  of  the  Balance  is  really 
one  by  which  both  of  two  parties  are  each  try- 
ing to  be  stronger  than  the  other;  and  as  both 


158  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

cannot  be,  this  method  postulates,  as  a  basis  for 
international  relationship,  a  physical  impossibility 
if  all  are  to  be  treated  alike ;  or  else,  not  something 
which  is  fair  for  all  alike  but  something  which 
places  one  party  at  a  disadvantage.  This,  of 
course,  will  never  be  accepted  and  the  inevitable 
result  is  a  constant  struggle  for  preponderant 
power,  incidents  of  which  struggle  are  bound  at 
certain  stages  to  be  war. 

Now  a  conception  of  international  relationship 
based  on  sheer  superiority  of  English  or  Anglo- 
Saxon  sea  power  belongs  to  just  this  character  of 
policy.  It  assumes  that  other  nations,  without 
sharing  in  any  way  the  control  of  its  force,  will 
be  content  to  accept  it  either  because  it  is  purely 
defensive  and  could  not  be  a  menace  to  them,  or 
because  they  can  do  nothing  else  since  Anglo- 
Saxon  peoples  alone  can  exercise  preponderant 
sea  power. 

I  want  to  show  in  this  chapter  that  these  last 
assumptions  are  invalid,  that  sea  power  as  a 
factor  of  international  politics  need  not  be  and 
usually  is  not  purely  defensive;  that  as  it  is 
obliged  in  practice  to  operate  with  land  powers 
against  other  land  powers,  the  incidence  of  its 
alliances  may  well  make  for  the  support  of  mili- 
tarily aggressive  nations ;  and  that  as  sea  domina- 
tion has  belonged  in  the  past  to  other  than  Anglo- 
Saxon  nations  it  may  well  do  so  in  the  future. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        159 

In  the  first  chapter  I  have  attempted  to  show 
that  British  sea  power  of  itself,  in  peace  time, 
does  not  operate  as  a  tyranny  or  menace  to  the 
world,  or,  as  an  instrument  for  commercial 
favouritism.  But  as  English  sea  power  in  war 
becomes  generally  a  part  of  some  land  power  it  is 
its  effect  in  that  connection  which  we  have  to 
consider  in  estimating  its  international  influence. 

To  an  American  belongs  the  honour  of  having 
brought  home  to  the  world  the  real  meaning 
of  sea  power,  and  he  once  for  all  destroyed  the 
illusion  of  its  being  necessarily  a  purely  defensive 
arm.  The  mechanism  of  the  thing  has  been 
sketched  in  the  preceding  chapter.  It  is  certain 
secondary  results  in  international  politics  with 
which  we  are  now  concerned. 

Mahan's  teaching — quite  true  teaching  as  far 
as  it  went — was  one  of  the  causes,  and  not  the 
least  potent,  of  this  war.  But  for  the  entrance 
of  Germany  into  the  field  of  naval  competition  it 
is  doubtful  whether  the  differences  between 
Germany  and  England  would  have  been  irrecon- 
cilable ;  and  consequently  whether  European  poli- 
tics would  have  drifted  away  from  the  principle 
of  the  Concert  which  for  some  time — as  in  the 
Salisburian  regime — had  the  support  of  English 
influence,  and  towards  the  re-erection  by  England 
of  the  method  of  the  Balance,  which  has  given 
the  present  result. 


160  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

More  than  one  English  critic  (Professor 
Spencer  Wilkinson  among  the  number)  has  noted 
Mahan's  influence  on  German  naval  policy.  It 
was  summarised  by  a  writer  in  the  London 
Nation  just  after  Mahan's  death,  thus : 2 

The  strategist  who  evolved  the  theory  of  sea  power 
was  much  more  than  a  historian.  He  helped  to  make 
history,  much  as  Treitschke  did.  .  .  .  His  teaching  was 
available  to  remind  us  how  considerable  are  the  oppor- 
tunities for  attack,  how  immense  the  resources  of  resist- 
ance, of  a  Power  which  retains  the  unchallengeable  com- 
mand of  the  seas. 

Admiral  Mahan  had  an  immense  influence  among 
ourselves.  But  we  are  inclined  to  think  that  his  influence 
on  German  thinking  was  even  more  fateful.  He  gave  us 
clear  reasons  for  persevering  in  our  traditional  policy. 
He  gave  the  Germans  equally  cogent  reasons  for  seeking 
their  future  on  the  sea.  One  may  doubt,  indeed,  whether 
Bernhardi  and  all  his  school  had  as  much  effect  in 
deciding  Germans  to  build  a  great  navy  as  this  American 
historian,  who  drew  the  lessons  of  the  past  primarily  for 
the  benefit  of  the  English-speaking  world.  His  books 
were  quoted  as  classics  by  Count  Reventlow  and  other 
leaders  of  the  "Flottenverein."  The  significance  of  Mahan 
is  chiefly  that  he  swept  away  the  comfortable  maxim  in 
which  most  of  us  were  nursed,  that  a  navy  is  only  a 
weapon  of  defence.  Its  function  in  history  has  been, 

'There  is  a  story  which  I  have  been  unable  to  verify  that  in 
the  last  few  months  of  his  life  Mahan,  who  was  a  keenly  reli- 
gious man,  was  profoundly  affected  by  the  realisation  that  his 
doctrines  had  played  so  large  a  part  in  stimulating  German 
naval  ambitions  and  so  in  producing  the  war. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        161 

primarily,  the  acquisition  of  Empire.  When  modern  Ger- 
many turned  away,  under  the  pressure  of  its  growing 
industries  and  its  teeming  population,  from  the  Bismarck- 
ian  ideal  of  a  purely  Continental  Empire  to  dreams  of 
extra-European  expansion,  it  found  Mahan's  books  ready 
for  its  use.  ...  It  might,  indeed,  by  a  purely  Continental 
victory  over  France,  for  example,  acquire  French  colonies, 
but  it  would  hold  them  only  by  the  leave  of  the  Power 
which  commanded  the  seas.  Nor  was  the  case  much 
better,  if  it  thought  not  so  much  of  predatory  adventures 
at  the  expense  of  European  Powers,  but  turned  instead 
to  the  appropriation  of  spheres  of  influence  in  China  or 
Turkey.  There,  too,  it  met  with  the  hard  fact  of  our 
supremacy  at  sea.  Wild  extremists  may  have  thought 
of  an  invasion  of  England.  Sober  men,  like  Prince  von 
Biilow,  used  the  argument  from  capture  at  sea.  But  the 
real  motive  which  explains  the  rise  of  the  modern  German 
navy  is  the  lesson  derived  from  Mahan,  that  sea  power  is 
essential  to  world  empire.  That  at  bottom  is  the  reason 
why  our  attempts  at  discussion  invariably  failed.  We 
were  rather  apt,  on  our  side,  to  disguise  the  real  facts, 
when  we  used  to  argue  as  though  the  sole  function  of 
our  navy  were  to  defend  our  shores.  The  Germans  knew 
better;  Mahan  and  history  were  their  teachers.  ...  If 
we,  on  our  side,  had  been  a  little  franker  in  our  thinking, 
we  might,  perhaps,  have  carried  rather  further  the  policy 
of  facilitating  German  expansion,  which  Lord  Salisbury 
followed  in  the  delimitation  of  Africa. 

This  passage,  though  going  far  beyond  the 
general  English  understanding  of  the  German 
view,  fails  to  give  full  value  to  this  considera- 
tion: that  any  continental  power,  dealing  with 


162  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

purely  continental  enemies,  is  obliged,  quite  apart 
from  any  question  of  overseas  ambitions,  to  take 
British  naval  force  into  consideration  as  a  pos- 
sible arm  of  those  continental  enemies.  As  the 
present  war  illustrates. 

Assume,  for  the  sake  of  argument — it  may  not 
be  true  at  all,  but  as  an  illustration  helps  to  clarify 
the  working  of  these  things — that  German  terri- 
torial ambitions  did  not  envisage  British  territory 
at  all;  that  they  ran  mainly  in  the  direction  of 
Asia  Minor,  acting  at  first  through  Austria  and 
Austria's  domination  of  Servia.  Yet,  even  so, 
England  is  brought  into  the  conflict  in  support  of 
the  principle  of  the  Balance  of  Power,  the  prin- 
ciple that  a  continental  power  that  greatly  over- 
tops the  rest  threatens  her. 

How  is  this  theory  defended  ? 

The  answer  explodes  the  notion  that  sea  power 
is  something  which  Anglo-Saxon  peoples  can 
alone  exercise.  If  England  could  always  be  sure 
that  no  other  power  could  challenge  her  sea  posi- 
tion, why  should  the  erection  of  an  overpowering 
State  upon  the  Continent  threaten  her  ?  Her  navy 
would  make  both  herself  and  her  empire  safe. 

But  she  assumes  that  other  nations,  if  they 
become  powerful  enough,  can  build  navies;  that 
"sea  power,"  though  exercised  at  sea,  is  made  up 
of  things  that  come  from  the  land :  iron,  steel,  coal, 
intricate  and  costly  machinery,  scientific  training. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        163 

Naval  power  is  mainly  a  matter  of  wealth — 
of  industrial  efficiency  which  enables  a  people  to 
build  ships  and  pay  for  them.  The  proportion 
of  material  to  men  is  very  much  greater  in  naval 
than  in  land  war.  Even  seamanship  is  not  an 
exclusive  possession  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race: 
great  seamen  of  the  past  have  been  Scandina- 
vians, Normans,  Portuguese,  Spaniards,  Italians, 
Dutch,  and  even  Moors.  They  have  all  taken  to  the 
sea  readily  enough  when  the  wealth  of  their  coun- 
tries was  bound  up  with  sea  trade  and  enabled 
them  to  maintain  great  navies.  History  indeed 
is  quite  emphatic  on  the  point  that  widely  diver- 
gent races,  situated  in  very  different  geo- 
graphical conditions,  can  equip  themselves  with 
the  wherewithal  of  sea  power.  A  Germano-Slav 
combination,  a  Russia  under  the  tutelage  of 
Germany,  which  Professor  Cramb  foretells  so 
emphatically3  as  one  of  the  inevitable  combina- 
tions of  the  future,  organising  the  resources  of 
territories  very  much  greater  than  those  of  the 
United  States  and  a  population  twice  that  of 
North  America,  with  outlets  on  the  Pacific,  the 
Atlantic,  the  Baltic,  the  Black  Sea,  and  the  Medi- 
terranean, would  not  be  faced  by  any  physical 
impossibility  should  it  determine  to  challenge  the 
predominance  of  British  sea  power. 

*In  "Germany  and  England." 


164  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

That  is  the  first  point :  It  is  to  take  a  very  short 
view  of  history  to  assume  that  sea  power  must 
necessarily  be  the  exclusive  possession  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon. 

But  the  same  fact  also  demonstrates  the  inter- 
dependence of  land  and  sea  power.  If  Britain  has 
to  prevent  the  growth  of  a  land  power — that  is  in 
the  first  instance  a  military  nation  using  military 
force  to  increase  its  resources — she  can  only  do  so 
by  allying  herself  with  other  military  powers,  its 
rivals.  Sometimes  this  has  to  be  done  without 
reference  to  the  merits  of  any  particular  dispute 
between  continental  states  or  to  the  character  of 
a  particular  state ;  or  to  the  question  whether  the 
alliance  promotes  a  free  form  of  government  or 
not,  as  when,  during  so  large  a  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  she  supported  Turkey  against 
Russia. 

Moreover,  the  relative  importance  of  the  mili- 
tary role  in  this  necessary  combination  between 
land  and  sea  tends  to  become  greater  for  reasons 
that  I  will  deal  with  presently. 

This  will  inevitably  have  one,  or  both,  of  two 
results — always  assuming  that  the  struggle  for 
political  power  based  on  armed  force  continues. 
It  will  compel  an  empire  like  the  British  to  de- 
velop the  potential  military  force  contained  in  its 
millions  of  Asiatic  subjects,  or,  more  and  more 
to  be  dependent  upon  the  land  forces  of  military 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        165 

and  continental  allies.  In  the  former  contingency 
there  is  likely  to  be  a  certain  divergence  of  in- 
terest in  the  matter  of  relations  to  Asia  as  be- 
tween Britain  and  America  (and  even  certain 
of  the  British  colonies)  and  in  the  latter  con- 
tingency the  development  of  the  military  struggle 
is  just  as  likely  to  make  for  the  survival  of  the 
military  type  of  civilisation  as  for  the  "Anglo- 
Saxon." 

This  former  point  bears  upon  one  of  the 
assumptions  made  by  the  writer  from  whom  I 
have  quoted  at  the  head  of  this  chapter.  He 
assumes,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  in  future 
world  politics  America  and  the  British  Empire 
are  certain  to  have  such  identity  of  aim  that 
any  war  made  by  one  is  sure  to  represent  the 
national  aims  and  purposes  of  the  other;  or 
at  least  not  be  so  divergent  as  to  run  counter 
to  those  vital  interests  which  the  sea  power  of 
either  could  be  called  upon  to  defend.  This 
implies  that  their  naval  forces  could  never  be 
brought  into  rivalry.  That,  of  course,  is  assur- 
edly to  be  hoped,  but  it  is  interesting  to  note 
that  Mahan,  although  cited  in  the  passage  quoted 
above  as  supporting  such  view,  was  by  no 
means  positive  thereon.  Asked  on  one  occasion 
by  the  Editor  of  The  North  American  Review 
to  express  his  opinion  upon  Anglo-American 
reunion,  which,  it  had  just  then  been  suggested, 


166  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

should  have  its  beginning  in  a  naval  union  or 
alliance,  he  wrote  a  long  article4  which,  while 
paying  every  tribute  to  the  moral  unity  of  Anglo- 
Saxondom  and  hands-across-the-sea  sentiment, 
yet  "turned  down  the  proposition."  He  gives 
more  than  a  hint  that  America,  dominating  a 
whole  continent,  standing  in  a  maritime  sense 
between  the  two  great  halves  of  the  Old  World — 
Europe  and  Asia — is  destined  to  control  very 
largely  in  the  days  to  come  the  communications 
between  them.  "Whate'er  betide,"  he  writes  of 
those  times,  "sea  power  will  play  in  those  days 
the  leading  part  which  it  has  in  all  history." 
He  goes  on : 

The  United  States  by  her  geographical  position  must 
be  one  frontier  from  which  as  from  a  base  of  operations 
the  sea  power  of  the  civilised  world  will  energise.  .  .  . 
Like  the  pettier  interests  of  the  land  it  must  be  competed 
for,  perhaps  fought  for.  The  greatest  of  the  prizes  for 
which  nations  contend,  it  too  will  serve  like  other  conflict- 
ing interests  to  keep  alive  that  temper  of  stern  purpose 
and  strenuous  emulation  which  is  the  salt  of  the  society 
of  civilised  states. 

The  writer  from  whom  I  have  quoted  also 
speaks  of  the  importance  of  "Anglo-Saxon  sea 
power  from  the  point  of  view  of  possible  con- 
flict between  this  continent  and  Asia."  But  can 

4The  North  American  Review,  November,  1894. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        167 

we  assume  that  in  the  matter  of  the  relationship 
to  Asia  the  position  of  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain  is  certain  to  be  identical? 

Are  we  not  apt  to  overlook  the  fact  that  Great 
Britain,  in  addition  to  being  an  Anglo-Saxon,  is 
becoming  more  and  more  an  Asiatic  Power — 
more  and  more  dependent  as  her  military  needs 
increase  upon  Asiatic  populations  ?5 

A  certain  cleavage  between  the  two  Anglo- 
Saxon  powers  has  in  this  matter  already  revealed 
itself.  Great  Britain  is  and  has  been  for  many 
years  an  ally  of  Japan;  the  military  and  naval 
aid  of  the  latter  country  in  the  present  war  has 
been  accepted  by  Great  Britain.  During  that 
period  the  relations  of  Japan  and  the  United 
States  have  been  getting  steadily  worse.  Japan 
has  seized  the  occasion  presented  by  the  war  to 
assert  a  virtual  sovereignty  over  China.  China  is 
avowedly  looking  to  at  least  the  moral  assist- 

'The  system  which  England  may  be  compelled  to  develop  in 
India  and  Egypt  and  equatorial  Africa,  France  may  be  com- 
pelled to  develop  in  other  parts  of  Africa.  A  school  of  French 
military  leaders  have  for  many  years  been  urging  the  more 
thorough  conscription  of  the  natives  of  Northern  and  Western 
Africa — the  development  of  "La  Force  noire,"  as  one  of  their 
military  writers  has  called  it.  Some  little  has,  of  course,  been 
done  in  that  direction  already,  but  the  possibilities  of  the 
system  have  hardly  been  realised  in  the  view  of  some  very  notable 
authorities.  Some  of  the  first  "French"  troops  that  the  Germans 
met  in  battle  in  August,  1914,  were  Senagambian  blacks — "val- 
iantly defending  their  fatherland,"  as  Maximilian  Harden 
remarked. 


1 68  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

ance  of  the  United  States  against  this  encroach- 
ment and  the  United  States  has,  it  is  reported, 
made  very  energetic  diplomatic  representations  to 
Japan. 

The  situation  is  far  too  undeveloped  to  judge  of 
its  permanent  reaction  on  Anglo-American  rela- 
tions, but  it  is  certain  that  Britain,  at  a  time  when 
she  is  beginning  to  make  very  considerable  use  of 
Indian  troops  outside  of  Indian — and  even  Asiatic 
— territory  (and  if  her  military  needs  of  the  future 
become  more  pressing  she  is  pretty  certain  to 
develop  this  system)  will  go  to  very  great  lengths 
to  avoid  cleavage  of  policy  with  Japan,  a  nation 
that  in  a  few  years  has  become  the  "England  of 
the  East,"  and  is  in  some  degree  setting  the 
direction  of  Asiatic  ambition. 

I  have  said  that  the  relative  importance  of  the 
military  part  in  the  necessary  combination  of  land 
and  sea  power  tends  to  become  greater. 

In  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  eighteenth 
centuries  the  three  or  four  great  nations  of 
Europe  imposed  their  authority  upon  great  spaces 
of  Africa  and  Asia  and  America — divided  the 
world  between  them — in  large  part  with  small 
bodies  of  men.  The  destiny  of  half  a  continent 
might  depend  upon  the  fact  of  a  single  shipload 
of  men  landing  among  savages  and  establishing 
some  sort  of  authority  among  them.  It  was  much 
more  largely  a  matter  of  sea  roving  than  it  would 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        169 

be  possible  for  any  contest  between  European 
powers  in  Asia  or  Africa  or  America  to  be  to- 
day. The  development  of  transport  and  com- 
munication, both  by  land  and  sea  (Russia  put 
immense  armies  into  Manchuria  without  sending 
a  regiment  by  sea)  the  industrialisation  of  the 
world,  the  Europeanisation  of  Asiatic  populations 
has  altered  the  old  conditions. 

This  is  indeed  the  strongly  expressed  view  of 
more  than  one  English  authority  on  sea  power. 
In  his  "Navy  and  Sea  Power,"  6  Mr.  Hannay 
says: 

Let  us  assume  that  the  day  may  come  .  .  .  when 
Great  Britain  will  require  on  American,  Asiatic,  or 
African  frontiers,  not  the  handful  of  men  who  obeyed 
Clive  or  the  small  armies  of  British  soldiers  who  were 
led  by  Wolfe,  Lake  or  Sir  Arthur  Wellesley,  but  great 
hosts.  What  will  be  the  influence  of  sea  power  then? 
Its  function  will,  of  course,  be  to  keep  open  the  road 
for  its  armies,  but  the  fate  of  the  empire  will  depend  on 
the  armies. 

Nor  has  the  process  of  consolidation  and  expansion 
gone  on  only  in  remote  continents.  It  has  been  every 
whit  as  conspicuous  in  Europe.  .  .  .  Instead  of  weak 
Imperial  cities  and  small  kingdoms  on  the  north  there  is 
the  German  Empire.  The  kingdom  of  Italy  has  taken 
the  place  of  feeble  Genoa  and  moribund  Venice,  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Tuscany,  the  States  of  the  Pope  and  the 
Kingdom  of  Naples.  If  the  formation  of  the  German 

•Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  New  York. 


170  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Empire  and  the  Italian  Kingdom  has  destroyed  the  old 
pre-eminence  of  France  on  the  continent  it  has  also 
radically  affected  the  position  of  Great  Britain  on  the 
sea.  .  .  .  The  century  which  began  in  1814  by  the  Treaty 
of  Paris  has  witnessed  one  long  struggle  on  the  part  of 
Great  Britain  to  maintain  her  relative  position  on  the  sea 
and  .  .  .  she  has  barely  succeeded.  ...  If  the  world 
believes  that  the  Great  Sea  Power  thinks  itself  to  be  in 
danger,  is  eagerly  seeking  for  allies  and  will  make  sacri- 
fices to  obtain  them  ...  it  has  some  excuse. 

It  is  a  conceivable  thing  that  Japan  might  be  driven 
out  of  Manchuria  as  Sweden  was  driven  out  of  the  Baltic 
provinces  in  spite  of  all  her  fleet  could  do.  It  is  also  a 
conceivable  thing  that  the  frontiers  -of  Canada  and  of 
British  India  might  become  to  Great  Britain  nearly  what 
the  frontiers  of  the  Rhine,  the  Alps,  and  the  Netherlands 
were  to  Louis  XIV.  The  burden  of  defending  them 
might  be  so  exhausting  that  the  Sea  Power  might  be 
beaten  even  if  it  had  never  lost  the  'command  of  the  sea. 
.  .  .  And  that  is  the  peril  which  in  the  end  proved  fatal 
to  Athens,  to  Phoenicia,  to  Venice,  to  Holland ;  the  strain 
of  carrying  on  war  on  land.  It  is  a  dream  that  power  on 
the  sea  can  dominate  the  land.  It  is  valuable  because  it 
gives  access  to  the  land.  ...  It  is  the  bridge  which  keeps 
up  communication  and  gives  access — and  is  of  infinite 
value.  But  it  may  be  crossed  on  a  march  to  Moscow  and 
to  the  retreat  therefrom. 

Whatever  be  the  precise  place,  however,  of 
navies  in  relation  to  armies  as  bearing  upon  the 
identity  of  Anglo-Saxon  sea  power  and  the  sur- 
vival of  democratic  nationalities,  we  can  in  any 
case  say  this:  the  history  of  Britain's  conti- 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        171 

nental  struggles  is  proof  enough  that  in  the 
choice  of  allies  for  the  defence  of  a  policy  like 
the  Balance  of  Power,  even  the  greatest  mari- 
time nation  is  obliged  to  disregard  the  precise 
quality  of  the  civilisation  of  the  allies  which  it 
may  choose ;  and  consequently  disregard  the  kind 
of  civilisation  which  its  policy  may  or  may 
not  promote.  The  conditions  of  the  struggle  for 
political  power  do  not  leave  this  possibility  of 
picking  and  choosing,  the  common  impression  to 
the  contrary  notwithstanding. 

The  franker  and  abler  political  critics  of  Eng- 
land who  do  not  allow  what  may  be  termed 
the  "constants"  of  statecraft  to  be  obscured  by 
popular  feeling  on  incidentals — however  praise- 
worthy and  natural  it  may  be — fully  recognise 
this.  The  difference  between  the  popular  concep- 
tion of  national  policy  and  the  "real,"  or  realistic, 
was  revealed  a  few  months  after  the  war  by  an 
interesting  incident. 

Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  made  a  public  statement 
to  the  effect  that  Britain  had  gone  into  the  war 
simply  because  of  Germany's  disregard  of  public 
right — the  violation  of  the  integrity  of  Belgium, 
in  other  words.  "But  for  that,"  he  said  "95  per 
cent  of  the  electors  of  Great  Britain  would  have 
been  against  embroiling  this  country  in  hostili- 
ties." In  other  words,  the  Balance  of  Power 
consideration  of  itself  would  never  have  involved 


172  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  country.     Mr.  Lloyd  George's  own  position 
was  stated  as  follows: 

This  I  know  is  true — after  the  guarantee  given  that 
the  German  fleet  would-  not  attack  the  coast  of  France  or 
annex  any  French  territory,  I  would  not  have  been  a 
party  to  a  declaration  of  war  had  Belgium  not  been 
invaded;  and  I  think  I  can  say  the  same  thing  for  most, 
if  not  all,  of  my  colleagues.  If  Germany  had  been  wise 
she  would  not  have  set  foot  on  Belgian  soil.  The  Liberal 
Government,  then,  would  not  have  intervened. 

When  this  statement  appeared  in  the  press, 
the  London  Times,  whose  historic  role  has  al- 
ways been  to  voice  the  Foreign  Office  and  never 
more  so  than  in  the  last  few  years,  printed  a 
very  remarkable  leading  article  entitled:  "Why 
we  are  at  War."  The  following  are  passages: 

There  are  still,  it  seems,  some  Englishmen  and  Eng- 
lishwomen who  greatly  err  as  to  the  reasons  that  have 
forced  England  to  draw  the  sword.  They  know  that  it 
was  Germany's  flagrant  violation  of  Belgian  neutrality 
which  filled  the  cup  of  her  indignation  and  made  her 
people  insist  upon  the  war.  They  do  not  reflect  that  our 
honour  and  our  interest  must  have  compelled  us  to  join 
France  and  Russia,  even  if  Germany  had  scrupulously 
respected  the  rights  of  her  small  neighbours,  and  had 
sought  to  hack  her  way  into  France  through  the  Eastern 
fortresses.  The  German  Chancellor  has  insisted  more 
than  once  upon  this  truth.  He  has  fancied,  apparently, 
that  he  was  making  an  argumentative  point  against  us  by 
establishing  it.  That,  like  so  much  more,  only  shows  his 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        173 

complete  misunderstanding  of  our  attitude  and  of  our 
character.  .  .  .  Why  did  we  guarantee  the  neutrality  of 
Belgium?  For  an  imperious  reason  of  self-interest,  for 
the  reason  which  made  us  defend  the  Netherlands  against 
Spain  and  against  the  France  of  the  Bourbons  and  of 
Napoleon.  .  .  .  We  keep  our  word  when  we  have  given 
it,  but  we  do  not  give  it  without  solid  practical  reasons, 
and  we  do  not  set  up  to  be  international  Don  Quixotes, 
ready  at  all  times  to  redress  wrongs  which  do  us  no  hurt. 
....  Even  had  Germany  not  invaded  Belgium,  honour 
and  interest  would  have  united  us  with  France. 

We  joined  the  Triple  Entente  because  we  realised, 
however  late  in  the  day,  that  the  time  of  "splendid  isola- 
tion" was  no  more.  We  reverted  to  our  historical  policy 
of  the  balance  of  power,  and  we  reverted  to  it  for  the 
reasons  for  which  our  forefathers  adopted  it.  They 
were  not,  either  for  them  or  for  us,  reasons  of  sentiment. 
They  were  self-regarding,  and  even  selfish,  reasons. 
Chief  amongst  them,  certainly,  was  a  desire  to  preserve 
the  peace  of  Europe,  but  it  was  the  chief  only  because 
to  preserve  that  peace  was  the  one  certain  way  to 
preserve  our  own.  In  the  event  of  war  we  saw,  as  our 
fathers  had  seen,  England's  first  line  of  attack  and  of 
defence  in  her  Continental  Alliances.  When  we  subsi- 
dised every  State  in  Germany,  and  practically  all  Europe, 
in  the  Great  War,  we  did  not  lavish  our  gold  from  love  of 
German  or  of  Austrian  liberty,  or  out  of  sheer  altruism. 
No;  we  invested  it  for  our  own  safety  and  our  own 
advantage,  and  on  the  whole,  our  commitments  were 
rewarded  by  an  adequate  return. 

In  this  war,  as  we  have  again  and  again  insisted  in 
the  Times,  England  is  fighting  for  exactly  the  same  kind 
of  reasons  for  which  she  fought  Philip  II,  Louis  XIV, 
and  Napoleon.  .  .  .  She  is  not  fighting  primarily  for 


174  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Belgium  or  for  Serbia,  for  France,  or  for  Russia.  They 
fill  a  great  place  in  her  mind  and  in  her  heart.  But  they 
come  second.  The  first  place  belongs,  and  rightly  belongs, 
to  herself.7 


Now  this  article  is  singularly  honest;  if  all 
political  writing  were  as  frank,  public  discussion 
would  be  a  pleasanter  business  than  it  is  and 
would  give  better  and  saner  results  than  it  does. 

We  see  here,  in  placing  the  two  expressions  of 
opinion — that  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  the 
Times — side  by  side,  the  popular  as  opposed  to 
the  diplomatic  and  governmental  conceptions  of 
policy.  And  in  European  foreign  politics  the 
chancelleries  initiate  and  conduct  policy;  the 
public  approves  and  pays,  when  it  has  been  told 
what  to  approve.  It  is  true  that  a  policy  could 
never  be  carried  into  effect  without  public  sanc- 
tion, but  in  our  prevailing  conceptions  con- 
cerning the  need  of  upholding  the  hands  of  the 
government  and  supporting  the  country  through 
thick  and  thin,  the  public  never  fail  to  sanction 
anything  the  diplomatists  may  initiate.  When 
the  balance  of  power  demanded  the  support  of 
the  Turk  and  opposition  to  Russia,  the  Turk 
was  supported  by  the  public  at  large,  who  shouted 
the  song  in  the  music  halls  from  which  the  word 
"Jingo"  took  its  origin:  'The  Roosian  shall  not 

"March  8,  1915. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        175 

have  Con-stan-ti-no-pool."  But  they  are  just  as 
ready  to  shout,  as  at  present,  that  he  shall. 

The  recognition  of  these  moral  foundations  of 
British  foreign  policy  is  not  confined  to  Conser- 
vative publicists  like  writers  in  the  Times.  A 
presumably  Liberal  critic  does  not  hesitate  to 
admit  that  even  when  France  stood  for  repub- 
licanism and  freedom  in  Europe  as  against  re- 
action, England  supported  reaction  because  the 
"Balance"  demanded  it. 

"Pitt's  principle  of  the  stability  of  Europe  meant  the 
maintenance  of  an  equilibrium  between  a  few  great 
Powers  without  any  kind  of  reference  to  the  feelings  and 
wishes  of  the  populations  they  governed.  The  French 
were  the  special  objects  of  his  dread,  because  they  had 
introduced  a  most  disturbing  principle  into  this  system — 
the  principle  that  the  peoples  themselves  counted  for 
something.  This  was  what  he  meant  by  'infection,'  and 
in  1793  it  was  not  French  power  but  French  principles 
that  the  English  aristocracy  feared.  That  the  French 
broke  their  own  principles  nobody  denied,  but  the  part- 
ners in  the  first  Coalition  would  not  have  liked  them  any 
better  if  they  had  observed  those  principles  with  the  most 
scrupulous  care."  8 

Of  course,  popular  feeling  does  not  operate  thus 
cold  bloodedly,  and  it  is  as  well  that  it  does  not. 
It  has  an  infinite  capacity — as  witness  feeling  in 
Germany  at  present — for  making  any  war  even 
that  of  most  doubtful  origins,  a  Holy  War. 

"The  Nation  (London)  May  29,  1915. 


176  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

The  fashion  in  which  a  nation  may  see  in  its 
alliances,  actually,  or  sub-consciously  perhaps 
prompted  by  one  object,  the  accomplishment  of 
a  very  much  more  "noble"  one  (a  phenomenon 
that  modern  psychology  explains  in  quite  precise 
terms)  is  illustrated  in  the  difference  between 
the  attitude  of  the  average  English  historian 
to-day  towards  the  Napoleonic  struggle  and 
that  of  a  French  one.  To  the  Englishman, 
Britain's  action  a  century  since  was  just  what 
it  is  to-day — resistance  to  a  gross  military 
tyranny  which  threatened  Europe.  And  he  pic- 
tures France  to-day  as  a  penitent  France,  having 
learned  wisdom,  co-operating  with  the  British  to 
prevent  Germany  doing  what  France  tried  to  do 
a  hundred  years  ago.  Yet  to  the  Frenchman, 
France  is  fighting,  not  on  the  opposite  but  on  the 
same  side,  so  far  as  principles  are  concerned,  as 
that  on  which  she  fought  when  she  fought  against 
England.  Speaking  at  the  Sorbonne,  the  French 
historian,  Aulard,  said  the  other  day9,  in  begin- 
ning his  discourse: 

"La  guerre  actuelle,  la  guerre  que  nous  soutenons 
centre  le  militarisme  prussien,  centre  TAllemagne  prus- 
sianisee,  n'est  que  la  continuation  de  la  Revolution  fran- 
caise.  Nous  combattons  pour  la  meme  cause  que  com- 
battaient  nos  aieux  en  1793  et  1'an  II." 

"March  7,  1915. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        177 

And  yet,  as  one  English  critic  points  out,  in 
the  eyes  of  many  Englishmen  this  was  the  first 
round  in  the  duel  between  the  British  spirit  of 
national  independence  and  the  revolutionary 
spirit  of  aggrandisement.  In  French  eyes  what  is 
all-important  about  the  warfare  of  1793  and 
1794  was  that  it  decided  whether  or  not  the  ex- 
periment in  democracy  should  be  allowed  in 
Europe.  That,  and  nothing  less,  was  at  stake. 
If  in  1793  the  Coalition,  as  represented  by 
Austria,  Prussia,  and  Great  Britain,  had  reached 
Paris,  as  Germany  tried  to  reach  it  in  1914,  the 
counter-revolution  would  have  been  triumphant 
from  one  end  of  Europe  to  the  other.  "It  is  not 
difficult,"  as  Mr.  Grant  Robertson  points  out,  "to 
conjecture  what  a  Holy  Alliance,  worked  by  Thu- 
gut  and  Lucchesini,  Artois  and  Godoy,  Frederick 
William  II,  of  Prussia  and  the  Hapsburgs,  the 
Bourbons  of  Madrid  and  Naples  and  Great 
Britain  in  the  fetters  of  the  reaction  of  1793-1801, 
would  have  wrought  in  a  Europe  that  knew 
nothing  of  the  Spanish  Rising,  Stadion,  Hofer, 
and  Stein,  and  the  Wars  of  Liberation." 

I  have  hinted  above  and  dealt  at  some  length 
in  a  previous  chapter  with  our  easy  changes  in 
regard  to  Russia.  English  professors  at  the 
present  moment  are  prepared  to  prove  to  you 
that  Russia  is  a  democratic,  anti-military,  liberal- 
ising force  in  Europe.  It  may  be  so,  although 


178  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  discovery  comes  rather  late,10  but  England  was 
just  as  ready  when  her  politico-military  position 
demanded  it  to  fight  Russia  and  enter  into  an 
alliance  with  the  Turk — "the  finest  gentleman  in 
Europe" — whom  Englishmen  at  the  time  of  the 
Crimean  War  were  very  angry  with  Cobden  for 
disparaging.  During  the  nineteenth  century 
England  allied  herself  with  the  Turk  as  against 
the  Russian  because  it  was  deemed  that  Russia 
might  threaten  England's  power  by  cutting  her 
road  to  the  East.  She  just  as  readily  allies  her- 
self with  the  Russian  against  the  Turk  when  the 
overpowering  consideration  of  maintaining  her 
political  power  in  the  world  seems  to  justify  it. 
(The  fact  that  England  desires  to  maintain  that 
power  for  defensive  purposes  only  does  not  affect 
the  fact. )  At  an  earlier  period  she  fought  in  alli- 
ance with  the  German  against  the  French  because 
France  seemed  to  be  the  main  threat  to  her  power. 
She  fights  just  as  readily  in  alliance  with  the 
French  against  the  German  when  the  same  pre- 
dominant motive  counsels  it.  Russia  in  the  Russo- 

10It  will  be  noted  that  the  Allies  are  expecting  victory  to  do 
for  Russia  what  they  tell  us  defeat  alone  can  do  for  Germany — 
check  the  reactionary  forces.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  on  the 
morrow  of  Russian  defeats  in  August,  1915,  that  Russian  Liberals 
presented  their  claims  for  the  liberation  of  political  prisoners, 
freedom  for  the  Jews,  better  treatment  of  Finland,  the  severer 
treatment  of  bureaucratic  corruption,  and  so  on.  So  long  as 
Russian  arms  were  victorious  the  government  showed  not  the 
least  disposition  to  move  in  these  things,  but  went  on  its  old  way. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        179 

Japanese  War,  in  1903,  "valiantly  defends  Chris- 
tian civilisation  against  Asiatic  heathenism,"  and 
just  as  valiantly  enters  into  an  alliance  with  it  in 
1914.  The  "yellow  peril"  was  often  presumed  to 
be  one  of  the  justifications  of  European  arma- 
ment. Yet  when  the  Armageddon  comes  it  en- 
ables Japan  to  do  two  things :  on  one  hand,  to  take 
the  first  steps  towards  control  over  four  hundred 
million  Chinese,  and,  on  the  other,  to  assist  in 
the  attempt  to  break  up  the  militarily  most  effi- 
cient nation  of  Europe,  the  one  that  has  shown  a 
national  genius  for  organisation  and  which  would 
in  any  military  effort  by  Europe  as  a  whole  be  its 
natural  leader.  It  affects  one  curiously  to  read: 
"The  best  artillery  the  Russians  have  is  Japanese 
artillery,  manned  by  Japanese  gunners — men  who 
fought  them  to  the  death  ten  years  ago — and 
Japanese  experts  in  all  lines  are  assisting  them." 
Italy  is  in  close  alliance  with  Austria  and  Ger- 
many for  a  generation  and  then  in  ten  months — 
when  she  has  failed  to  get  all  she  thinks  she  is 
entitled  to  in  the  way  of  territory — finds  that 
Austro-Germans  are  the  enemies  of  human 
freedom;  and  goes  to  war  with  them.  Perhaps 
the  most  serious  thing  of  all  is  that  the  need  for 
military  alliance  in  these  combinations  is  at  times 
so  great  that  military  necessities  of  the  moment 
are  allowed  to  override  considerations  of  perma- 
nent territorial  settlement.  The  Crimean  War, 


i8o  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

by  which  England,  for  political  purposes  of  her 
own,  upheld  the  dominion  of  Turkey  over  Chris- 
tian populations,  was  at  least  one  of  the  ancestors 
of  the  present.  In  the  present  war  both  sides  are 
offering  to  the  Balkan  powers  bribes  which  are 
not  designed  to  achieve  permanent  settlement  of 
Balkan  difficulties  but  merely  to  secure  military 
co-operation  in  a  war  involving  half  the  world. 
But  the  worst  example  of  all,  perhaps,  is  Italy. 
In  order  to  bring  her  into  the  war  she  has  been 
offered  bribes  which,  if  ever  paid,  will  make 
future  Balkan  wars  inevitable.  A  previous  chap- 
ter summarises  evidence  to  show  that  in  Mr. 
Lathrop  Stoddard's  words,  "Italian  victory  will 
probably  sweep  the  Italian  people  into  the  am- 
bitious race  for  world  dominion."  n 

I  have  referred  at  several  points  throughout 
this  book  to  the  relations  of  England  and  Europe 
generally  to  the  Near  Eastern  question  because 
it  reveals  very  clearly  the  real  motive,  as  apart 
from  the  avowed,  which  is  so  often  either  self- 
deceptive  or  half  hypocritical — the  fact  that  our 
European  conflicts  have  but  little  to  do  with  the 
conflict  of  cultures  and  ideals.  Such  motives  are 
indeed  less  operative  to-day  than  at  certain  former 
periods.  When  Europe  fought  the  Turk  for  the 
possession  of  Jerusalem,  the  European  had  a  real 

"See  Chapter  III. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        181 

belief  in  the  importance  of  religious  dogma  and 
symbol.  It  was  a  motive  which  outweighed  alto- 
gether "national"  considerations.  Europe  fought 
as  Christians,  not  as  Frenchmen  or  Englishmen. 
A  really  "ideal"  motive  determined  their  wars. 
But  when  to-day  we  talk  of  differences  of  national 
culture — any  ideal  save  that  of  Power  or  the  fear 
of  it — determining  our  international  politics,  our 
changed  relation  to  the  Turk  shows  us  how  un- 
real is  that  pretended  motive.  For  between  the 
"civilisation"  of  the  Mohammedan  conquerors 
who  captured  Constantinople  nearly  five  hundred 
years  since  and  the  civilisation  of  Western 
Europe,  a  real  gulf  is  fixed.  It  is  not  an  imaginary 
one  created  by  hazy  philosophers  who  are  mis- 
understood perhaps  more  when  they  are  read  than 
when  they  are  not,  but  a  real  difference  of  the 
ordering  of  daily  lives.  For  very  nearly  five 
centuries,  in  a  city  which  for  a  still  longer  period 
had  been  one  of  the  capitals  of  Christendom,  the 
alien  conqueror  has  maintained  a  society  which 
has  included  physical  slavery  in  some  of  its  most 
degrading  forms  ( involving  for  centuries  raiding 
expeditions  among  Christian  populations  for  the 
purpose  of  bolstering  the  military  ambitions  of 
an  oriental  despot  or  of  satisfying  the  sordid  lust 
of  a  heathen  court),  polygamy,  organised  assas- 
sination on  a  huge  scale,  corruption,  oppression 
of  the  crudest  and  most  obscene  form  (in  which 


182  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  victims  were  mainly  Christians),  and  you 
had  actually  a  great  Christian  monument  given 
over  to  the  rites  of  an  oriental  invader — from 
beginning  to  end  a  contemptuous  repudiation  of 
Christian  morals  and  all  the  social  and  civic  prin- 
ciples upon  which  Western  civilisation  is  sup- 
posed to  be  based. 

If,  therefore,  it  is  the  difference  in  such  funda- 
mental things  as  these  which  is  the  underlying 
cause  of  war,  we  ought  to  find  in  the  alliances 
and  groupings  that  have  marked  the  wars  in 
which  the  Turk  has  been  involved  the  Christian 
and  Western  Powers  ranged  as  a  whole  against 
this  alien  and  anti-Christian  Power.  But  it  so 
happens  that  in  not  one  of  those  wars  in  which 
the  modern  Powers  were  involved  has  the  group- 
ing been  along  those  lines  at  all.  If  international 
politics,  the  conflicts  between  nations,  were  con- 
cerned with  the  profound  differences  of  men;  if 
wars  and  the  alliances  of  wars  arose  out  of  deeper 
moral  issues,  you  would  have  found,  of  course, 
the  essentially  anti-Christian  and  anti-Western 
Turk  confronted  with  the  hostility  of  Christian 
and  Western  Powers.  But  it  is  precisely  this 
clear-cut  issue  which  you  never  have  found  in  all 
the  intricacies  of  Eastern  politics.  Always  has 
the  Turk  found  a  Christian  champion  or  a  Chris- 
tian ally — for  considerably  over  half  a  century 
Great  Britain  was  that  champion  and  ally. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        183 

Englishmen  who  are  honestly  and  genuinely 
shocked  at  a  German-speaking  Alsace  being  ruled 
from  Berlin,  and  who  would  regard  an  English 
war  for  the  continuance  of  such  a  thing  as  an 
unimaginable  national  crime,  were  not  in  the 
least  shocked  at  England  fighting  a*  war  against 
a  Christian  Power  in  order  to  uphold  Turkish 
domination  in  Christian  lands.  Not  merely  were 
they  not  shocked,  but  they  thought  it  entirely 
natural  that  English  poets  should  laud  the  spec- 
tacle, and  insisted  that  English  public  men  who 
ventured  to  criticise  such  a  situation  were  evi- 
dently lost  to  all  sense  of  national  honour. 

One  cannot  dismiss  all  this  as  ancient  history; 
it  is  very  much  modern  history,  since  it  is  un- 
fortunately part  of  the  very  problem  which  we 
have  to  face  to-morrow  in  things  like  the  dis- 
posal of  Constantinople  and  the  settlement  of  the 
Balkan  difficulty.  It  is  because  all  the  great 
Christian  nations  in  the  past  have  been  in  fact 
indifferent  to  the  moral  differences  and  have  been 
mainly  concerned  to  increase  their  political  power 
as  against  some  other  Christian  nation,  that  the 
problems  presented  to  us  to-day  are  all  but  in- 
soluble. 

What  is  certain  also  is  that  when  we  find  the 
predominant  sea  power  swinging  between  the 
support  of,  and  opposition  to,  rival  civilisations  in 
this  way;  when  we  find  it  standing,  however  un- 


184  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

willingly,  for  the  Japanese  conquest  of  China,  the 
expansion  of  Russia,  the  settlement  of  Balkan 
questions  with  reference  only  to  securing  the  mili- 
tary aid  of  the  respective  states,  the  annexation 
by  Italy  of  territory  which  will  inevitably  increase 
difficulty  in  the  future,  it  is  evident  that  naval 
force  has  not  within  it  some  mysterious  element 
enabling  it  to  operate  with  non-militarist  military 
allies  and  to  stand  invariably  for  the  promotion 
of  free  civilisations  as  against  the  unfree. 

At  this  moment  of  writing  nobody  knows  on 
which  side  of  the  fence  certain  of  the  Balkan 
states  will  descend,  and  in  their  case  the  high 
falutin'  about  "conflict  of  morals  and  ideals," 
"inevitable  clash  of  civilisations,"  is  a  little  too 
much  even  for  our  political  leader  writers.  Bul- 
garia, through  her  Prime  Minister,  announces 
with  most  commendable  frankness  that  her  mili- 
tary assistance  is  for  sale  to  the  highest  bidder. 
The  following  is  a  press  despatch  from  Sofia :  12 

The  Bulgarian  Premier,  for  the  first  time,  to-day 
revealed  to  the  world  exactly  what  Bulgaria  demands 
for  remaining  neutral,  and  what  she  asks  from  the  Allies 
for  driving  the  Turk  from  Europe,  an  operation  that 
admittedly  would  prove  the  turning  point  of  the  war 
for  the  Allies. 

Radoslavoff  is  the  storm  centre  of  the  greatest  diplo- 
matic struggle  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Because  Bul- 

"  August  gth,  1915. 


LIMITATIONS  OF  SEA  POWER        185 

garia  holds  the  key  to  the  world  war  the  diplomatic 
agents  of  every  great  power  involved  swarm  here,  their 
pressure  centering  upon  him.  Said  the  Premier: 

"We  will  fight  for  but  one  end.  That  is  to  extend 
our  frontiers  until  they  embrace  the  people  of  our  own 
blood,  but  that  end  must  be  guaranteed.  Bulgaria  is 
fully  prepared  and  waiting  to  enter  the  war  the  moment 
she  receives  absolute  guarantees  that  by  so  doing  she 
will  attain  that  for  which  other  nations  already  engaged 
are  striving,  namely,  the  realisation  of  her  national  ideals." 

"We  have,  therefore,  frankly  and  openly  accepted  the 
offers  of  both  groups  of  powers  in  negotiations  to  that 
end.  Only  by  dealing  with  both  sides  do  we  feel  we  can 
obtain  the  best  guarantees  that  what  we  desire  will  be 
attained." 


Presumably,  if,  as  the  result  of  the  large  bait 
offered  by  the  Allies,  Bulgaria  joins  the  war, 
it  will  also  be  in  her  case  "a  life  and  death  struggle 
for  profound  convictions."  Six  months  hence  the 
Bulgarians  may  be  fighting  quite  genuinely  and 
sincerely  in  the  belief  that  they,  too,  have  been 
forced  into  war  in  defence  of  their  national  exist- 
ence and  spiritual  ideals  ruthlessly  threatened  by 
an  alien  civilisation;  they  will  hate  the  Germans 
with  a  deadly  and  quite  genuine  hatred.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  Germany  can  to-day  make  the 
better  offer  they  will  "defend  their  threatened 
existence"  and  "spiritual  ideals"  in  alliance  with 
"their  brave  comrades  in  arms  the  Austrians  and 
Germans  against  their  hereditary  enemies  the 


1 86  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Servians,"  whom  in  that  case  they  will  certainly 
regard  as  the  hired  assassins  of  the  Russians  and 
the  British. 

But  the  point  for  us  at  present  is  that  the  mili- 
tary critics,  as  I  write,  are  seriously  declaring  that 
Bulgaria's  decision  will  determine  the  issues  of 
the  war.  "Bulgaria  holds  the  key  to  the  world's 
war,"  says  one  of  them.  So  that  it  is  not  sea 
power  that  will  save  our  civilisation,  but — Bul- 
garia! Fancy  the  future  of  civilisation  at  the 
mercy  of  a  Bulgarian  politician. 

That  fact — to  the  degree  to  which  it  is  a  fact 
at  all — illustrates  the  dependence  of  sea  power 
upon  certain  other  forces  in  these  world  struggles. 
It  is  not  that  it  does  not  play  a  large  role  therein. 
It  is  perfectly  true  that  without  England's  sea 
power — and  America's  munitions — even  the  Bul- 
garian politicians  could  not  save  civilisation.  But 
these  things  are  interdependent,  and  the  depend- 
ence of  sea  power  on  those  other  things  marks  its 
limitations.  It  is  quite  unable  of  itself  to  impose 
this  or  that  culture  at  will  upon  the  two  billions 
of  the  planet;  and,  even  if  that  were  possible, 
Anglo-Saxon  peoples  have  no  patent  in  it. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  NEUTRALITY,  AND 
THE  SOVEREIGNTY  AND  INDEPEN- 
DENCE OF  NATIONS 


The  whole  history  of  the  fight  for  neutral  right  is  a 
history  of  failure.  The  power  which  is  politically  the 
freest  and  most  liberal  in  the  world  has  by  its  practice 
tenaciously  prevented  any  enlargement  of  neutral  right. 
Yet  it  has  shown  by  its  attitude  in  peace  time  towards 
international  law  a  desire  to  respect  those  rights.  This 
seems  to  indicate  that  it  is  impossible  to  reconcile  bel- 
ligerent necessity  at  sea  with  real  observance  of  neutral 
right.  In  that  case  would  not  neutrals  better  secure  their 
larger  and  more  permanent  interest  by  modifying  the 
doctrine  of  neutrality  as  at  present  understood  in  the 
direction  of  economic  discrimination  in  war  time  against 
the  side  that  has  refused  to  submit  its  case  to  enquiry  and 
so  violated  the  international  conventions  designed  to  pro- 
tect the  integrity  of  states?  This  need  was  foreseen  by 
Grotius  and  will  be  in  keeping  with  future  conditions  if 
the  guarantors  of  neutrality  treaties  should  be  largely 
increased  in  number.  Would  the  assumption  of  limited 
international  obligation  of  this  kind  expose  states  to 
greater  risk  or  cost,  or  greater  surrender  of  sovereignty 
and  independence  than  is  involved  in  their  position  in 
war  time  under  existing  arrangements? 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  NEUTRALITY,  AND 
THE  SOVEREIGNTY  AND  INDEPEN- 
DENCE OF  NATIONS 

THE  growth  of  the  spirit  of  nationality  is  ad- 
mittedly the  outstanding  fact  in  the  political 
history  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Although  it 
had  its  beginnings  in  a  feeling  for  popular  rights 
it  has  gone  far  in  its  international  effects,  not  only 
to  undo  the  work  of  the  French  Revolution  among 
European  democracies — for,  of  course,  the  prin- 
ciples of  modern  nationalism  are  in  flat  contra- 
diction with  the  idealistic  cosmopolitanism  of  the 
Revolutionary  period — but  to  render  the  concep- 
tion of  European  society,  or  of  Christendom,  as 
a  unity,  less  vivid  perhaps  than  it  was  five  or, 
for  that  matter,  ten  centuries  since.  The  mediaeval 
sovereign  could  acknowledge  subserviency  to  the 
head  of  the  Christian  Church,  as  representative 
of  a  universal  order,  a  moral  sanction  standing 
over  and  above  the  political  State.  But  to-day 
we  are  only  just  beginning  to  emerge  from  the 
domination  of  political  philosophies  which  would 

make  the  State,  even  in  morals,  the  final  appeal. 

189 


190  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Nineteenth  century  nationalism,  on  its  popular 
side,  is  at  one  not  only  with  the  "anti-intellec- 
tualist"  tendencies  of  our  time  but  also  with  later 
reactionary  German  philosophy  in  its  assumption 
that  beyond  the  political  State  there  can  exist  no 
real  obligations.  The  slogan  so  current  in  Eng- 
land and  America,  "My  country  right  or  wrong," 
is  merely  the  popular  expression  of  the  neo-Hege- 
lianism  of  Treitschke  or  Bernhardi. 

This  general  conception  has  resulted  in  intense 
hostility  on  the  part  of  modern  nations  to  sur- 
rendering the  least  particle  of  national  independ- 
ence and  sovereignty  on  behalf  of  any  obligation 
to  civilisation  or  organised  society  as  a  whole. 

Every  effort  towards  internationalisation  is 
apt  to  be  met  with  the  objection  that  the  com- 
plete independence  of  states,  that  sovereignty 
which  allows  them  means  of  individual  develop- 
ment and  self-expression,  which  prevents  the 
world  being  cast  in  one  monotonous  mould,  is 
a  very  precious  quality  which  may  be  cheaply 
purchased  even  at  the  price  of  disorder  and 
war. 

I  want  to  give  just  a  hint  of  the  extent  to  which 
this  hesitation  to  assume  international  obligation 
defeats  its  own  end,  compelling  nations  to  sur- 
render both  sovereignty  and  independence  in 
large  measure;  to  show  how  those  things  are 
necessarily  invaded  by  belligerent  action  in  war, 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    191 

and  to  illustrate  by  an  historical  instance  or 
two  the  failure  of  neutrals  to  defend  them; 
to  show  that  neutral  right  far  from  developing 
has  in  practice  always  had  to  cede  to  belligerent 
need.  This  does  not  necessarily  imply  any  ill 
will  on  the  part  of  the  belligerent ;  on  the  contrary, 
the  more  it  can  be  shown  that  the  power  com- 
manding the  sea  was  or  is  desirous  of  respecting 
neutral  right,  the  stronger  does  the  case  become 
for  some  revision  of  the  principles  of  neutrality 
and  belligerency. 

I  am  suggesting  also  that  just  as  the  belligerent 
cannot  respect  the  sovereignty  and  independence 
of  the  neutral,  the  neutral  cannot  observe  real 
impartiality;  that  the  action  of  "neutrals,"  while 
still  preserving  the  legal  forms  of  neutrality,  may 
conceivably  determine  the  issues  of  a  great  wrar. 
And,  finally,  that  the  aims  of  the  nations  as  a 
whole  in  this  matter — the  objects  for  which  Mr. 
Asquith  has  declared  Britain  to  be  fighting  this 
war,  namely,  "to  maintain  the  independent  exist- 
ence and  free  development  of  the  various  nation- 
alities each  with  a  corporate  consciousness  of  its 
own" — can  best  be  achieved  by  the  general  aban- 
donment of  a  fictitious  neutrality  on  behalf  of 
some  such  common  international  action  as  that 
outlined  in  the  first  and  detailed  in  the  last  chap- 
ter of  this  book,  a  principle  the  need  of  which 
by  the  way  was  foreseen  by  Grotius. 


'192  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

A  London  paper,  discussing  certain  problems 
arising  out  of  the  present  war,  speaks  of  "the 
horrid  disease  of  internationalism"  and  expresses 
the  opinion  that  a  nation  willing  to  yield  one 
fraction  of  its  sovereignty  or  independence  to 
foreigners  has  "sacrificed  its  soul"  to  ease  and 
convenience  and  that  those  who  would  counte- 
nance such  an  act  are  guilty  of  "preaching  a 
mischievous  and  immoral  doctrine." 

Yet  this  same  authority  is  an  ardent  defender 
of  all  those  belligerent  rights  at  sea  claimed  by 
Great  Britain  in  the  present  war;  and  evidently 
in  defending  these  two  things  at  one  and  the  same 
time  sees  no  inconsistency  whatever,  showing 
how  little  is  there  any  general  and  vivid  realisa- 
tion of  the  sacrifice  of  sovereignty  and  inde- 
pendence which  the  non-combatant  nations  are 
compelled  to  make  under  the  existing  condition 
of  things.  It  is  doubtful  whether  until  just 
recently  Americans  as  a  whole  have  really 
visualised  the  extent  of  the  surrender  of  their 
own  sovereignty.  The  situation  is  referred  to 
briefly  in  a  previous  chapter,  but  it  is  necessary 
to  elucidate  it  in  greater  detail. 

Most  Americans  certainly  have  at  the  back  of 
their  minds — or  had  until  the  recent  exchange  of 
notes  with  Great  Britain — a  general  impression 
that  the  United  States  by  her  past  wars,  by  the 
respect  which  she  is  able  to  impose  for  her  flag, 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    193 

by  the  power  of  her  navy  and  her  army,  had 
acquired  the  right  at  least  to  go  about  her  lawful 
business  on  the  high  seas  without  let  or  hindrance 
from  anyone;  that  an  American  ship,  flying  the 
American  flag,  carrying  American  goods  to  a 
country  with  which  it  was  at  peace  and  with 
which  all  the  rest  of  the  world  was  at  peace,  could 
at  least  proceed  secure  and  unmolested;  that  an 
American  merchant  had  at  least  secured  the  right, 
backed  by  the  power  of  his  country,  to  trade  with 
the  four  corners  of  the  world.  That  is  all  fiction. 
The  American  merchant  cannot  sell  a  single 
sack  of  wheat  or  a  ton  of  iron  to  any  country, 
although  that  country  may  be  at  peace  with  this 
country  and  with  all  the  world,  save  by  the  per- 
mission of  a  foreign  naval  bureaucrat  if  that 
foreign  official's  country  cares  to  go  to  war.  The 
American  merchant  carries  on  his  trade  not  by 
virtue  of  any  right  which  his  Government  has 
managed  to  enforce,  but  simply  to  the  extent  to 
which  a  foreign  official  will  permit  him  to  do  so. 
A  Chicago  or  New  York  magnate  may,  for  in- 
stance, enter  into  vast  commercial  arrangements 
with  some  foreign  magnate  in  Amsterdam  or 
Rome  or  Buenos  Aires,  and  the  Governments  of 
the  United  States  and  Holland  and  Italy  and 
Argentina  may  be  agreed  as  to  the  legitimacy  of 
the  transaction — but  it  will  not  be  completed  un- 
less a  British  official,  making  himself  judge  of 


194  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

all  its  details,  decides  that  it  is  in  accordance  with 
His  Majesty's  Orders  in  Council.  The  American 
merchant  may  make  oath  which  may  be  supported 
by  the  foreign  merchant  that  the  cargo  is  of 
such  and  such  a  nature,  destined  for  such  and  such 
a  purpose;  all  that  will  go  for  nothing  if  in  the 
decision  of  a  court,  in  which  neither  the  American 
nor  the  Dutchman  nor  the  Argentine  is  repre- 
sented, the  circumstances  are  not  what  the  par- 
ties profess  them  to  be.  The  American  ship  can 
be  searched,  its  cargo  can  be  turned  upside  down, 
can  be  held  up  indefinitely  by  a  British  officer, 
and  the  fiat  of  a  foreign  court  will  decide  the 
fate  of  the  American  merchant's  enterprise. 

Now,  if  I  appear  to  put  this  case  strongly — 
as  a  matter  of  fact  I  have  put  it  rather  in  its 
minimum  than  in  its  maximum  form — it  is  not 
because  I  want  to  create  the  impression  that  the 
American  has  any  grievance,  but  because  I  want 
to  make  it  plain  that  he  has  not.  All  that  I 
have  indicated  takes  place  in  strict  accordance 
with  international  law.  The  case  could  be 
made  a  great  deal  stronger  if  one  sketched  in- 
stances of  power  exercised  under  recent  Orders  in 
Council,  but  the  legality  of  which  may  be  a  little 
questionable.  The  British  are  applying,  at  least 
in  the  situation  I  have  described,  not  merely  the 
law,  but  what  American  interpretation  of  the  law 
sanctions.  There  may  be  differences  as  to  details, 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    195 

but  this  right  of  a  foreign  navy  absolutely  in  this 
way  to  control  the  trade  of  the  whole  world,  to 
say,  at  any  rate  within  very  wide  limits,  when 
their  particular  navy  happens  to  be  at  war, 
which  ship  shall  pass  and  which  shall  not,  which 
country  it  shall  trade  with  and  which  it  shall 
not,  is  a  condition  which  the  American  Gov- 
ernment has  accepted  and  which,  fittingly  enough, 
the  writings  of  an  American  admiral  have  done 
a  good  deal  to  encourage.1 

1When  we  remember  that  the  only  formal  code  to  which 
England  was  definitely  bound  in  most  of  the  questions  which 
have  been  raised  is  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  I  think  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  say  that  there  has  been  definite  violation  of  law  on 
England's  part.  However  that  may  be,  we  can  certainly  say  this : 
that  any  other  country  would  have  acted  in  the  same  way. 
Even  in  the  matter  of  the  blockade,  which  is  not  complete,  Mr. 
Balfour  surely  makes  a  good  case  when  he  says  that  even  if 
England  has  violated  the  letter  she  has  respected  the  spirit  of 
the  law.  The  intention  was  to  exact  that  no  blockading  nations 
should  show  favoritism  of  one  neutral  as  against  another. 
What  has  actually  happened  is  that  the  accident  of  geography 
prevents  Britain  exercising  the  blockade  against  the  Scandi- 
navian States.  There  is  no  intentional  favoritism — the  thing 
at  which  the  law  was  evidently  aimed — on  England's  part. 

It  may  be  said  that  British  action  is  a  clear  violation  of 
Clause  2  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris.  ("The  neutral  flag  covers 
enemy's  merchandise  with  the  exception  of  contraband  of  war.") 
But  apart  from  the  question  of  what  is  contraband  neither 
Holland  nor  America  were  parties  to  that  Declaration;  its 
only  signatories  were  the  present  combatants,  so  that  in  strict 
law  America  has  no  grievance  arising  from  its  violation.  For 
blocking  the  approaches  to  neutral  harbours  justification  can 
be  found  in  American  action  during  the  North  and  South  War 
with  reference  to  ships  bound  for  Nassau  and  Mexican  ports — 


196  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Whether  the  above  is  an  over  statement  of  the 
situation  can  be  judged  by  the  admission  of  a 
famous  English  writer  on  Sea  Law  whose  efforts 
were  in  large  part  responsible  for  England's 
failure  to  ratify  the  Declaration  of  London. 
Although  he  takes  the  ground  that  Britain's 
authority  at  sea  is  already  too  curtailed  he  admits 
that  the  "last  rags  of  English  maritime  right" 
left  by  the  Declaration  of  Paris  include  the  right 
of  English  Prize  Courts  to  administer  not  the  law 
of  England  but  the  law  of  nations  and  to  decide 
every  material  question  affecting  the  rights  of 
neutrals : 

"Was  this  an  effectual  blockade?  The  Prize  Court 
alone  could  decide.  Was  there  an  actual  or  attempted 
breach  of  blockade?  The  Court  decided.  Were  these 
enemy  goods?  The  Court  alone  decided.  Was  this  a 
duly  commissioned  public  vessel  of  war?  The  Court 
pronounced.  Was  that  act  a  breach  of  neutrality?  The 
Court  declared.  Was  this  enemy  merchant  ship  duly 
transferred  by  a  valid  assignment  to  a  neutral  ?  Was  this 

the  American  doctrine  of  continuous  voyage.  Given  a  definition 
of  "blockade"  which  includes  the  maintenance  of  a  cruiser 
cordon  hundreds  or  even  thousands  of  miles  from  the  blockaded 
coast,  the  doctrine  of  "continuous  voyage"  and  its  derivative 
which  a  modern  writer  has  termed  "the  doctrine  of  continuous 
transport,"  a  definition  of  contraband  which  can  include  ladies' 
underclothing,  there  is  perhaps  no  British  act  for  which  some 
precedent  or  other  of  existing  international  law  cannot  be  found. 
However,  whether  a  pro-British  or  anti-British  view  of  the 
Anglo-American  dispute  is  taken,  is  in  fact  irrelevant  to  the 
main  thesis  of  this  chapter. 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    197 

or  that  thing  contraband  of  War?     Again  it  was  for 
the  Court."  2 

Yet  a  very  considerable  body  of  English 
opinion,  and  even  in  the  last  year  or  two  before 
the  war,  of  governmental  opinion,  has  worked 
hard  for  a  more  civilised  code.  The  significant 
thing  is  the  immense  gulf  which  separates  the  best 
English  intention  and  effort  as  to  sea  law,  and 
actual  English  practice.  One  has  only  to  take 
three  great  international  acts — the  Naval  Provi- 
sions of  the  Hague  Convention  of  1907,  the 
Project  for  the  International  Prize  Court,  and  the 
Declaration  of  London — and  to  remember  that 
though  these  last  two  did  not  receive  ratifica- 
tion, they  represented  the  evident  desires  of  the 
British  government  as  a  whole,  and  then  see  how 
utterly  that  government  has  failed  to  carry  out  the 
intention  embodied  in  those  acts,  to  realise  what 
immense  pressure  bears  against  the  respect  for 
neutral  interest  in  war  time.  Those  Conven- 
tions represented  the  painful  accumulations  of 
international  law  during  sixty  years — since  the 
signing  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris.  At  the  first 
"whiff  of  grape  shot"  the  whole  thing  was  swept 
away,  and  to  justify  the  Orders  in  Council  we 
have  to  go  back  to  the  Declaration  of  Paris  of 
1856 — indeed  it  is  the  opinion  of  Sir  John  Mac- 

*T.  G.  Bowles :  "Sea  Law  and  Sea  Power,"  pp.  18,  19. 


198  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

donnel  that  we  can  only  get  formal  justification 
for  them  by  going  back  to  still  earlier  conceptions. 
So  far  as  practice  is  concerned — and  international 
law  is  built  up  from  precedent — the  world  has 
made  no  progress  towards  the  protection  of 
neutral  rights  in  sixty  years. 

One  may  doubt,  indeed,  whether  it  has  made 
any  in  a  hundred — or  two.  Take  a  typical 
instance  of  the  struggle  between  neutral  and 
belligerent — that  which  led  to  the  war  of  1812. 
An  American  authority  has  recently  dealt  with 
the  facts  at  some  length.3  They  may  be  sum- 
marised as  follows : 

Great  Britain  had  (in  1806)  proclaimed  a 
blockade  of  the  Continental  coast  from  the  Elbe 
to  Brest,  though  she  let  it  be  known  that  it  would 
be  enforced  only  from  Ostend  to  Havre.  Napo- 
leon replied  with  his  Berlin  Decree,  proclaiming 
a  blockade  of  the  entire  British  Isles  and  for- 
bidding sub  Poena  all  trade  or  communication 
with  them — a  decree  considerably  resembling  the 
present  German  "war  zone"  order;  particularly 
in  this  respect,  that  Napoleon  was  quite  lacking  in 
naval  power  to  make  the  blockade  effective. 

Next  came  a  British  Order  in  Council  forbid- 
ding all  neutral  commerce  with  European  ports 
under  Napoleon's  control,  or  from  which  British 
commerce  was  excluded,  with  a  supplementary 

"North  American  Review,  May,  1915. 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    199 

Order  declaring  all  such  ports  to  be  blockaded, 
but  giving  neutral  vessels  which  were  warned 
away  from  them  the  privilege  of  proceeding  to 
some  open  port,  on  payment  of  a  fee  to  the  British 
Government.  In  reply  to  this  came  Napoleon's 
Milan  Decree,  ordering  the  seizure  and  confisca- 
tion of  every  neutral  vessel  which  submitted  to 
this  Order. 

American  commerce  was  thus  so  placed  that  it 
was  penalised  whatever  course  it  followed.  An 
American  merchant  ship  might  be  overhauled  by  a 
British  cruiser  and  searched,  quite  in  accordance 
with  international  law,  and  then  be  released  with 
an  admonition  not  to  try  to  enter  a  blockaded  port, 
but  to  proceed  to  some  open  port.  In  that  the 
American  would  be  committing  no  offence  against 
France  or  anyone  else.  Yet,  because  of  that  epi- 
sode, the  vessel  would  be  seized  and  confiscated 
by  the  French.  Vessels  had  to  comply  with 
certain  British  requirements  or  be  seized  by  the 
British.  Yet,  if  they  did  comply  with  them,  for 
that  very  cause  they  would  be  seized  and  confis- 
cated by  the  French. 

It  was  to  escape  from  this  embarrassing 
dilemma  that  the  famous  Embargo  was  ordered, 
forbidding  American  merchant  vessels  to  trade 
with  either  of  the  belligerents  and  thus  practi- 
cally confining  them  to  our  domestic  waters; 
whereupon  Napoleon  ordered  the  seizure  and 


200  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

confiscation  of  every  American  ship  found  on 
the  seas. 

The  next  move  was  made  by  Great  Britain,  in 
offering  to  repeal  the  Orders  in  Council  if 
America  would  repeal  the  Non-Intercourse  and 
Embargo  acts  so  far  as  Great  Britain  was  con- 
cerned, while  still  enforcing  them  against  France. 
This  bargain  was  not  consummated,  but  the 
knowledge  that  it  had  been  considered  provoked 
Napoleon  to  order  the  confiscation  of  every 
American  ship  that  might  enter  the  ports  of 
France,  Spain,  Italy,  or  the  Netherlands;  an 
order,  however,  which  was  not  promulgated. 
Then  Congress  repealed  the  Non-Intercourse  act 
and  gave  Americans  freedom  again  to  trade  with 
both  belligerents.  But,  at  the  same  time,  it  in- 
vested the  President  with  power  to  prohibit  inter- 
course with  France  if  Great  Britain  should  before 
March  3rd  withdraw  the  Orders  in  Council,  or 
with  Great  Britain  if  France  should  annul  the 
Decrees.  Neither  of  those  powers  took  action, 
and  the  act  therefore  remained  a  dead  letter. 

Later  in  that  year,  Napoleon,  fearing  war  with 
America,  suggested  that  he  would  withdraw  the 
Berlin  and  Milan  Decrees,  so  far  as  America  was 
concerned,  provided  that  the  United  States  would 
either  get  Great  Britain  to  annul  her  Orders  in 
Council  or  declare  non-intercourse  with  that 
country.  This  offer  was,  of  course,  designed 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    201 

either  to  have  the  blockade  of  the  French  coast 
removed  or  to  secure  America  as  an  ally  against 
Great  Britain.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  Napoleon 
ordered  the  condemnation  of  all  American  ves- 
sels which  had  entered  French  ports,  and  imposed 
upon  all  which  should  thereafter  arrive  a  vexa- 
tious system  of  license  fees  and  cipher  letters 
with  which  alone  they  would  be  permitted  to 
trade  with  France.  Madison  accepted  Napoleon's 
offer  at  its  face  value,  believed  that  all  restric- 
tions upon  American  commerce  with  France  were 
removed,  and,  in  default  of  similar  action  on  the 
part  of  Great  Britain,  proclaimed  non-intercourse 
again  with  the  latter  country.  That  led  to  the 
War  of  1812. 

But  the  war  itself  virtually  achieved  nothing 
so  far  as  the  permanent  protection  of  neutral 
right  is  concerned.  Anything  that  it  might  have 
accomplished  in  that  direction  has  been  undone 
by  America's  action  as  a  belligerent  since  then 
when  her  interest  happened  to  be  on  the  side  of 
expanding  belligerent  right.4 

*The  New  York  Times  says  with  reference,  for  instance,  to 
the  British  reply  to  the  American  notes :  "The  American  Eagle 
has  by  this  time  discovered  that  the  shaft  directed  against  him 
by  Sir  Edward  Grey  was  feathered  with  his  own  plumage.  To 
meet  our  contentions  Sir  Edward  cites  our  own  seizures  and 
our  own  court  decisions.  .  .  . 

"Sir  Edward  very  naturally  puts  great  reliance  upon  the 
case  of  the  Springbok,  involving  questions  of  continuous  voyage. 
The  principles  laid  down  in  the  Springbok  case  have  been  con- 


202  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

"The  issue  to-day  between  the  belligerents  and 
this  nation  is  the  same  as  that  between  the  United 
States,  Great  Britain,  and  France  a  century  ago. 
Napoleon's  Berlin  decree  was  in  retaliation  of 
England's  blockade  of  1806.  The  Kaiser's  sub- 
marine war  order  is  in  retaliation  of  the  British 
attempt  to  starve  Germany.  The  British  Orders 
in  Council  of  1807  were  in  retaliation  of  the 
Berlin  decree.  The  British  Orders  in  Council  of 
last  March  were  in  retaliation  of  Germany's  sub- 
marine war  order.  The  United  States  never  ad- 
mitted the  legality  of  Napoleon's  decrees  or  of 
the  British  Orders  in  Council,  it  declared  that 
they  were  illegal,  and  in  defence  of  its  rights 
resorted  to  the  embargo  and  non-intercourse  acts, 
with  the  result  that  Napoleon  cancelled  his  de- 
crees; but  England  refused  to  withdraw  her 

demned  by  some  of  the  greatest  authorities,  particularly  Conti- 
nental authorities,  on  international  law.  Sir  Edward  reminds  us, 
however,  that  it  is  the  business  of  text  writers  to  formulate 
existing  rules  and  not  to  offer  suggestions  of  their  own;  the 
'existing  rule'  is  unquestionably  that  laid  down  by  the  Supreme 
Court  and  accepted  by  Great  Britain  in  the  Springbok  case.  It 
was  not  through  lassitude  or  mere  good  nature  that  the  British 
member  of  the  Mixed  Claims  Commission  voted  with  the  other 
Commissioners  to  affirm  the  Springbok  condemnation.  Great 
Britain  was  not  disposed,  even  in  the  interest  of  British  com- 
merce and  British  ship  owners,  to  insist  then  upon  a  construc- 
tion of  law  which  in  her  later  experience  as  a  belligerent  she 
might  find  to  be  highly  inconvenient.  The  wisdom  and  fore- 
sight she  then  exhibited  now  enable  her  to  make  use  of  this  case 
in  the  argument  defending  her  blockade  practices  against 
Germany." 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    203 

Orders  in  Council,  and  the  war  of  1812  followed 
her  refusal.  To-day  the  United  States  is  on  pre- 
cisely the  same  ground  it  was  on  a  century  ago."  5 
The  whole  history  of  sea  law  reveals  over  and 
over  again  the  hopeless  ineffectiveness  of  any 
method  which  ignores  this  simple  fact :  that  to  the 
extent  to  which  the  nations  use  the  sea  at  all  they 
are  a  society,  and  that  the  units  have  obliga- 
tions the  one  to  the  other,  which  cannot  be  dis- 
charged by  "neutrality."  Recognising  the  im- 
possibility of  neutrality,  and  refusing,  or  unable, 
to  accept  the  principle  of  internationalisation,  the 
nations  have  in  the  past  applied  the  principle  of 
territorial  jurisdiction  to  the  seas — a  principle 
not  finally  surrendered  until  well  into  the  nine- 
teenth century.  They  divided  the  seas  between 
them.  Portugal  regarded  herself  as  sovereign 
of  the  whole  Indian  Ocean  and  the  Southern 
Atlantic.  Spain  more  modestly  laid  claim  to  the 
Pacific.  England  claimed  the  North  Sea  and 
the  Atlantic  from  Cape  Finisterre  to  Stadland 
in  Norway,  and  at  times,  tentatively,  the  seas 
of  the  world ;  and  it  was  only  in  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  that  Great  Britain 
silently  dropped  her  claim  that  foreign  vessels 
should  "strike  their  topsail  and  take  in  their  fla^ 
in  acknowledgment  of  his  Majesty's  sovereignty 
within  his  Majesty's  seas."  In  the  preceding  cen- 

§"R.  B."  in  the  New  York  Evening  Post. 


204  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

turies  this  very  claim  had  figured  in  the  causes  of 
more  than  one  war,  notably  with  the  Dutch. 
Hendrick  van  Loon  (whose  descent  may,  if  the 
reader  will,  prompt  a  certain  discount  of  his 
presentation  of  the  case)  tells  picturesquely  some 
early  phases  of  the  struggle. 

"On  the  2Qth  of  May,  1614,  Marten  Harperts- 
zoon  Tromp,  lieutenant  admiral  of  the  Republic  of 
the  United  Seven  Netherlands,  commanding  a 
fleet  which  cruised  off  the  coast  of  Flanders,  was 
by  persistent  and  severe  northeasterly  winds 
driven  in  the  direction  of  Dover.  There  he  met 
with  a  British  fleet  under  command  of  Blake. 
Between  the  two  countries,  England  and  Holland, 
there  was  no  state  of  war.  Furthermore,  the 
Dutch  Republic,  a  commercial  establishment 
which  preferred  sound  profit  to  mere  disputes 
about  hollow  honors,  had  given  its  admiral  urgent 
instructions  to  avoid  all  possible  conflict.  It  was 
known  and  had  been  known  for  a  long  time  that 
the  English  Government  insisted  upon  having 
their  ships  of  war  saluted  by  those  of  every  other 
nation.  Indeed,  the  first  open  warfare  about  this 
unwarranted  demand  of  England  had  occurred 
in  the  year  1640,  when  two  Swedish  warships 
had  been  attacked  because  they  refused  to  salute 
the  British  flag.  They  had  been  brought  to  the 
Island  of  Wight  and  had  been  released.  The 
conduct  of  the  admiral  had  been  thoroughly  ap- 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    205 

proved  by  Parliament  because  he  had  'Maintained 
this  Kingdom's  sovereignty  at  sea.'  Upon  this 
particular  occasion,  Admiral  Tromp,  to  avoid  all 
possible  misunderstanding,  struck  all  his  sails 
(except  the  topsails)  when  he  came  near  the 
British  fleet  and  made  ready  to  salute  by  lower- 
ing his  orange  pennant.  The  British  admiral, 
not  satisfied  with  this  preparation,  expressed  his 
feelings  by  firing  a  shot  which  mortally  wounded 
a  Dutch  soldier.  Tromp  thereupon  ordered  a 
boat  to  proceed  to  the  ship  of  the  British  admiral 
and  ask  for  an  explanation.  Before  the  explana- 
tion could  be  given  a  bullet  had  hit  his  ship  in  the 
centre.  Remembering  his  instructions,  Tromp 
satisfied  himself  with  a  defensive  action  and  after 
five  hours  quietly  sailed  home  to  report.  The 
first  battle  of  modern  times  for  the  right  to  the 
open  sea  had  been  fought." 

In  "The  Memorials  of  Sir  William  Penn,  Ad- 
miral and  General"  (London,  1833),  we  can  read 
how  Sir  William  meets  with  three  Dutch  vessels 
in  the  Mediterranean.  The  Dutch  vessels  salute 
the  British  squadron,  but  Sir  William  is  not  cer- 
tain that  they  have  done  this  politely  enough. 
Accordingly  he  calls  his  captains  together  for 
their  advice,  but  after  a  discussion  it  appears  that 
in  the  opinion  of  the  captains  the  Hollanders 
"have  done  enough"  and  they  are  allowed  to  go. 

It  was  some  forty  years  before  this  that  the 


206  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Dutch  East  India  Company,  in  the  matter  of  a 
law  suit  concerning  the  seizure  of  a  Portuguese 
vessel,  had  ordered  a  certain  young  attorney  to 
assist  in  the  defence.  This  young  man  set  to 
work  and  wrote  a  huge  tome.  This,  however,  he 
never  published.  But  one  short  chapter,  entitled 
"Mare  liberum,"  and  containing  the  chief  items 
for  the  defence,  was  printed  in  pamphlet  form. 
In  this  chapter  he  claimed  the  right  of  all  nations 
to  communicate  freely  with  each  other  on  water. 
This  right  he  based  upon  the  fundamental  laws 
of  humanity  and  at  the  same  time  denied  that  any 
one  single  nation  could  declare  herself  by  a  stroke 
of  the  pen  the  rightful  sovereign  and  owner  of 
the  limitless  ocean.  The  name  of  this  young  man 
was  Grotius  and  the  doctrine  that  he  then  enunci- 
ated brought  Holland  for  two  centuries  into 
deadly  conflict  with  England. 

Van  Loon  has  sketched  it  as  a  phase  of  the 
struggle  for  neutral  right.  If  it  was  we  can  only 
say  it  has  been  as  great  a  failure  as  the  other 
phase  of  that  struggle.  He  says : 

"From  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  on,  the 
issue  between  the  two  countries  was  clear.  On  the  one 
side  England,  with  her  claim  to  sovereignty  over  the 
billowy  highways  of  the  nations.  On  the  other  side  the 
Dutch  Republic,  which  demanded  that  these  roads  should 
be  open  to  all  those  who  wished  to  use  them  for  just  and 
lawful  purposes. 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    207 

"In  four  terrific  naval  wars  the  Dutch  Republic  tried 
to  establish  her  good  right  to  sail  and  trade  as  she 
pleased.  That  she  was  not  driven  into  this  conduct  by 
unselfish  reasons  of  a  speculative  legal  nature  alone  is 
quite  clear.  Her  demand  for  her  natural  right  coincided 
with  her  direct  commercial  interests.  But  without  any 
doubt  she  had  the  right  on  her  side." 

After  some  century  and  a  half  of  Anglo-Dutch 
conflict,  Holland's  task  was  also  taken  up  by 
others. 

The  story  is  told  by  Mahan,8  who  certainly 
could  not  be  accused  of  Dutch  sympathies  as  op- 
posed to  English.  Speaking  of  the  War  of  Armed 
Neutrality  (1780)  he  says: 

"The  claim  of  England  to  seize  enemy's  goods  in 
neutral  ships  bore  hardly  upon  neutral  powers,  and  espe- 
cially upon  those  of  the  Baltic  and  upon  Holland,  into 
whose  hands,  and  those  of  the  Austrian  Netherlands,  the 
war  had  thrown  much  of  the  European  carrying-trade; 
while  the  products  of  the  Baltic,  naval  stores,  and  grain, 
were  those  which  England  was  particularly  interested  in 
forbidding  to  her  enemies." 

The  declarations  finally  put  forth  by  Russia, 
and  signed  by  Sweden  and  Denmark,  were  four 
in  number: 

( I )  That  neutral  vessels  had  a  right,  not  only  to  sail  to 
unblockaded  ports,  but  also  from  port  to  port  of  a  bel- 

8  "Influence  of  Sea  Power  on  the  French  Revolution." 


208  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

ligerent  nation;  in  other  words,  to  maintain  the  coasting 
trade  of  a  belligerent. 

(2)  That  property  belonging  to  the  subjects  of  a  power 
at  war  should  be  safe  on  board  neutral  vessels.    This  was 
the  principle  involved  in  the  now  familiar  maxim,  "Free 
ships  make  free  goods." 

(3)  That  no  articles  were  contraband,  except  arms, 
equipments  and  munitions  of  war.    This  ruled  out  naval 
stores  and  provisions  unless  belonging  to  the  government 
of  a  belligerent. 

(4)  That  blockades,  to  be  binding,  must  have  an  ade- 
quate naval  force  stationed  in  close  proximity  to  the 
blockaded  port. 

The  contracting  parties  being  neutral  in  the 
war,  but  binding  themselves  to  support  these  prin- 
ciples by  a  combined  armed  fleet,  the  agreement 
received  the  name  of  the  Armed  Neutrality. 

Mahan  tells  us  that  the  British  Ministry, 
without  meeting  the  declarations  by  a  direct 
contradiction,  determined  to  disregard  them — a 
course  which  was  sustained  in  principle  even  by 
prominent  members  of  the  bitter  opposition  of 
that  day.  The  undecided  attitude  of  the  United 
Provinces,  divided  as  in  the  days  of  Louis  XIV 
between  the  partisans  of  England  and  France, 
despite  a  century  of  alliance  with  the  former, 
drew  the  especial  attention  of  Great  Britain. 
They  had  been  asked  to.  join  the  Armed  Neu- 
trality; they  hesitated,  but  the  majority  of  the 
provinces  favoured  it.  Mahan  adds: 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    209 

A  British  officer  had  already  gone  so  far  as  to  fire 
upon  a  Dutch  man-of-war  which  had  resisted  the  search 
of  merchant  ships  under  its  convoy,  an  act  which,  whether 
right  or  wrong,  tended  to  incense  the  Dutch  generally 
against  England.  It  was  determined  by  the  latter  that 
if  the  United  Provinces  acceded  to  the  coalition  of 
neutrals,  war  should  be  declared.  On  the  i6th  of  Decem- 
ber, 1780,  the  English  ministry  was  informed  that  the 
States-General  had  resolved  to  sign  the  declarations  of 
the  Armed  Neutrality  without  delay.  Orders  were  at 
once  sent  to  Rodney  to  seize  the  Dutch  West  Indies  and 
South  American  possessions;  similar  orders  to  the  East 
Indies;  and  the  ambassador  at  the  Hague  was  recalled. 
England  declared  war  four  days  later. 

Now  note  how  Mahan  tells  us  of  the  end  of  this 
two  hundred  years'  fight  of  Holland  for  a  right 
which  in  theory,  though  not  in  practice,  the  civil- 
ised world  has  come  unanimously  to  support. 
Holland's  fight  for  a  great  principle  of  civilisation 
ended,  as  it  was  bound  to  end,  in  existing  concep- 
tions of  neutrality  and  sovereignty,  and  is  thus 
described  by  Mahan: 

The  principal  effect,  therefore,  of  the  Armed  Neu- 
trality upon  the  war  was  to  add  the  colonies  and  com- 
merce of  Holland  to  the  prey  of  English  cruisers.  The 
additional  enemy  was  of  small  account  to  Great  Britain, 
whose  geographical  position  effectually  blocked  the  junc- 
tion of  the  Dutch  fleet  with  those  of  her  other  enemies. 
The  possessions  of  Holland  fell  everywhere,  except  when 
saved  by  the  French,  while  a  bloody  but  wholly  unin- 
structive  battle  between  English  and  Dutch  squadrons  in 


210  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  North  Sea,  in  August,   1781,  was  the  only  feat  of 
arms  illustrative  of  the  old  Dutch  courage  and  obstinacy. 

And  after  these  century-long  sacrifices  the 
Dutch  population  is  to-day,  in  1915,  being  im- 
poverished and  burdened,  the  trade  of  her  ports 
arrested  and  her  workpeople  deprived  of  employ- 
ment, from  the  very  selfsame  cause  for  which  she 
was  fighting  nearly  three  hundred  years  since; 
for  a  war  in  which  they  are  entirely  innocent 
and  in  which  they  have  no  share  they  are  paying 
as  heavily  as  some  of  the  combatants;  the  "Vry 
schip  Vry  goed"  for  which  they  have  given  so 
much,  is  once  more  shattered. 

"The  work  of  centuries,"  as  Dr.  van  Loon  says, 
"has  been  undone  in  a  few  months."  He  adds: 

The  North  Sea  once  more  has  been  proclaimed  the 
exclusive  property  of  the  warring  nations.  Without  any 
regard  for  the  rights  of  neutrals,  all  parties  liberally 
sprinkle  their  mines  upon  the  highroads  of  commerce. 
Like  so  many  sharks  German  submarines  shoot  rapidly 
through  the  waters  and  gobble  up  whatever  they  can  find. 
If  they  discover  that  in  the  hurry  of  the  moment  they 
destroyed  the  wrong  fish,  a  Swedish  or  Dutch  or  Nor- 
wegian ship,  they  say:  "Sorry;  it  was  a  mistake,"  and 
promise  some  future  indemnity,  which  does  not  make 
dead  men  alive. 

On  the  other  hand,  England,  blockading  the  German 
coast  at  a  distance  of  three  thousand  miles,  drives  all 
neutral  ships  into  her  harbors,  keeps  them  there,  talks 
about  them,  writes  about  them,  wastes  much  red  tape 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    211 

upon  them,  does  some  more  writing,  and  finally  lets  them 
go,  after  the  cargo  has  been  thoroughly  spoiled. 

Things  are  just  as  bad  in  the  Baltic.  They  threaten 
to  be  just  as  bad  in  the  Mediterranean.  A  similar  anarchy 
by  organised  government  was  never  before  seen. 

The  small  neutral  nations,  however,  unless  a  speedy 
return  is  made  to  some  semblance  of  law  and  order,  will 
be  impoverished  for  years  to  come.  Even  Switzerland, 
which  has  never  been  bothered  by  strictly  maritime  con- 
siderations, now  discovers  that  its  very  existence  depends 
upon  the  goodwill  of  the  unlawful  owners  of  the  high 
seas.  For  ten  months  the  republic  has  been  kept  from 
starvation  by  the  grace  of  Italy  and  England  and  has  been 
obliged  to  go  through  many  experiences,  humiliating  to 
the  proud  spirit  of  this  most  advanced  of  nations. 

French  and  English  prize  courts  have  apparently  de- 
cided that  all  Norwegian,  Swedish,  Danish,  and  Dutch 
ports  are  disguised  suburbs  of  the  German  Empire,  and 
the  difficulties  of  the  trade  between  those  countries  and 
the  rest  of  the  world  (even  with  their  own  colonies  and 
the  products  of  their  own  possessions)  are  such  that  the 
trade  may  come  to  a  complete  standstill  at  any  time.7 

And  be  it  noted,  the  nation  which  is  insisting 
upon  a  conception  of  belligerent  right  which 
produces  these  results,  entered  the  war  for  a  pur- 
pose described  by  its  Prime  Minister  in  the  fol- 
lowing terms : 

"The  end  which  in  this  war  we  ought  to  keep  in  view 
is  the  enthronement  of  the  idea  of  public  right  as  the 
governing  idea  of  European  politics.  Room  must  be 

7From  an  article  in  the  Boston  Transcript. 


212  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

found  and  kept  for  the  independent  existence  and  free 
development  of  the  smaller  nationalities — each  with  a 
corporate  consciousness  of  its  own. 

"Belgium,  Holland,  and  Switzerland  and  the  Scandi- 
navian countries,  Greece  and  the  Balkan  States  must  be 
recognised  as  having  exactly  as  good  a  title  as  their  more 
powerful  neighbours  to  a  place  in  the  sun." 

Now  I  do  not  believe  that  the  anticlimax  here 
indicated  is  in  conflict  with  what  has  been  said  in 
the  first  chapter  of  this  book ;  namely,  that  British 
"marinism"  in  normal  times  constitutes  no  men- 
ace to  the  other  nations  of  the  world.  But  war 
time  is  not  normal  time.  And  I  believe  further 
that  heavy  as  is  the  British  naval  hand  in  war 
time  it  is  as  light  as  would  be — or  could  be — 
that  of  any  other  power  exercising  the  belligerent 
right  of  the  command  of  the  sea  at  such  time. 
All  the  evidence  goes  to  show  that  England  does 
her  utmost  to  make  things  as  light  as  possible 
for  neutrals;  with  the  result,  however,  that  we 
have  seen. 

And  this  leads  directly  to  the  conclusion  sug- 
gested at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter,  namely, 
that  there  is  no  means  under  existing  conditions 
for  neutrals  to  escape  paying  very  heavily  for  a 
war  in  which  they  play  no  part  and  are  not  re- 
sponsible. They  cannot  escape  war's  risks. 

Would  the  risk  of  a  definite  obligation  to  take 
some  economic  part  in  a  system  of  policing  which 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    213 

looks  towards  the  restraint  of  nations  attempting 
aggression  involve  greater  risk? 

Moreover,  if,  under  present  arrangements, 
neutrals  have  grievances  against  belligerents, 
belligerents  have  grievances  against  neutrals. 

It  is  America — a  neutral — that  will  largely 
determine  the  issues  of  this  war.  One  may  admit, 
if  you  will,  that  England's  prohibition  of  imports 
of  food  and  raw  material  into  Germany  has  not 
had  the  effect  anticipated  (though  if  prolonged 
the  story  might  be  very  different).  But  no  one 
denies  the  overwhelming  importance  of  the  am- 
munitions supplied  to  England  and  her  Allies 
and  not  supplied  to  Germany. 

More  and  more  is  it  evident  that  modern  war  is 
what  Napoleon  foresaw  it  would  become,  mainly 
a  matter  of  munitions.8  It  is  a  war  largely  of 
factories.  As  the  industrial  population  is  drawn 
upon  more  and  more  for  the  army,  the  fact  that 
their  places  can  be  filled  indefinitely  by  calling 
upon  the  resources  in  ammunition  and  material 
of  outside  countries,  makes  those  countries 
directly  contributory  to  the  military  power  of  the 
nation  to  which  the  sales  are  made. 

"Mr.  Lloyd  George,  in  a  speech  reported  in  the  American 
press  as  I  write  these  lines,  says :  "The  reverses  of  our  allies, 
the  Russians,  are  due  absolutely  and  entirely  to  one  thing  only : 
a  lack  of  proper  ammunition.  .  .  .  What  we  have  to  do  is  to 
ensure  for  ourselves  and  our  allies  munitions,  more  munitions, 
and  still  more  munitions." 


214  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Indeed,  these  facts  are  not  challenged.  As  the 
war  goes  on,  military  opinion  gives  greater 
emphasis  to  them.  In  the  opinion  of  most  im- 
partial military  critics  to-day,  the  Allies  would 
have  a  hopeless  task  in  dislodging  the  Germans 
from  the  territory  held  by  them  if  the  immense 
quantity  of  ammunition  purchased  in  this  country 
were  withheld.  And  so  it  is  America  that  will 
largely  determine  the  issue  against  Germany. 

Now,  that  America  should  thus  be  free  to  aid 
in  the  defeat  of  Germany,  is,  in  the  view  of  the 
present  writer,  entirely  as  it  ought  to  be.  But 
what  is  not  as  it  ought  to  be  is  that  the  result  is 
secured  by  a  sort  of  chicanery.  Referring  to  the 
agitation  for  an  embargo  on  the  export  of  am- 
munition an  American  authority  says : 

"The  real  objection  to  the  proposed  embargo  is  not 
that  it  would  be  legally  unneutral,  but  that  it  would  be 
morally  and  politically  reprehensible.  By  forbidding1  the 
export  of  arms  and  munitions  the  United  States  would  be 
aiding  and  abetting  the  Germans  in  bringing  to  a  success- 
ful conclusion  a  deliberate  conspiracy  against  the  peace 
of  the  world.  .  .  . 

"The  government  of  the  United  States  must  continue 
its  profession  of  technical  neutrality,  but  American  public 
opinion  should  not  deceive  itself  with  the  pretence.  There 
are  two  ways  of  being  technically  neutral.  One  is  to 
sell  war  supplies  to  all  belligerents.  The  other  is  to  sell 
war  supplies  to  none  of  them.  We  should  prefer  the 
former,  and  should  assume  full  responsibility  for  the 
consequences  of  the  preference,  because  in  this  way  we 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    215 

can  most  effectually  protest  against  German  preparedness 
for  conquest  by  war.  Germany  should  be  made  to  under- 
stand that  the  loss  of  American  co-operation  is  one  of 
the  penalties  which  she  must  pay  for  the  violation  of 
Belgium.  If  she  had  not  attacked  France  through  Bel- 
gium the  demand  for  an  embargo  on  the  exportation  of 
war  supplies  would,  we  believe,  be  irresistible.  The 
government  of  the  United  States  did  not  formally  protest 
at  the  time  of  the  violation,  but  its  citizens  protested  and 
have  been  protesting  ever  since.  International  law  gives 
us  an  opportunity  of  making  that  protest  effective  with- 
out going  to  war  ourselves  with  Germany.  We  should 
take  advantage  of  it  as  a  matter  of  deliberate  national 
policy,  because  as  a  pacific  democracy  we  want  to  bring 
into  existence  a  world  in  which  inoffensive  pacific  nations 
are  free  from  unprovoked  attack.  And  in  every  unofficial 
way  Germans  should  be  made  to  understand  why  Amer- 
ican public  opinion  preferred  to  give  its  neutrality  an 
Anglican  rather  than  a  Teutonic  complexion."  9 

But  all  this  puts  the  United  States  government 
in  the  position  of  maintaining  a  solemn  diplomatic 
farce.  While  making  protestations  of  its  absolute 
neutrality  in  all  things,  it  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
enabling  Germany's  enemies  to  win  the  war.  And 
this  fact  of  itself  deprives  America's  act  in  siding 
with  the  Allies  of  the  moral  value  which  it  might 
otherwise  have  possessed.  It  has  in  it  a  large 
element  of  that  diplomatic  make-believe  which 
it  is  so  essential  for  the  future  to  break  down. 
The  writer  from  whom  I  have  quoted  is  forced 

"The  New  Republic,  July  10,  1915. 


216  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

to  admit  that  while  making  a  great  diplomatic 
parade  of  impartiality  the  government  is  obeying 
a  popular  feeling  which  is  not  at  all  impartial.  It 
would  be  better  in  every  way,  it  would  be  an  im- 
mense service  to  the  cause  which  the  American 
people  has  given  its  unofficial  allegiance,  if  the 
government  had  been  able  to  give  just  that  reason 
for  not  putting  an  embargo  upon  the  export  of 
munitions.  It  would  have  been  better  still,  if,  by 
virtue  of  the  terms  of  some  already  existing  inter- 
national arrangement,  like  that  indicated  in  the 
first  and  last  chapters  of  this  book,  the  American 
government  had  been  able,  in  the  fateful  days  of 
July,  1914,  when  Germany  was  repelling  the 
offers  of  an  international  enquiry,  to  notify  her 
that  failure  to  submit  her  case  to  such  enquiry 
would  close  America  to  her  as  a  source  of  sup- 
plies, whatever  happened.  If,  in  other  words, 
America  had  chosen  the  form  of  "neutrality"  for 
which  this  book  is  an  argument. 

The  accepted  conception  of  neutrality  is  a 
direct  encouragement  to  naval  rivalry.  The 
writer  from  whom  I  have  just  quoted  implies 
that  in  no  case — whether  Germany  won  com- 
mand of  the  sea  or  not — would  America  have 
aided  the  cause  of  the  violator  of  Belgium  by 
furnishing  supplies  and  munitions.  But  what 
assurance  have  we  of  that?  In  existing  cir- 
cumstances it  is  only  a  guess  to  say  that  had 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    217 

the  Germans  won  command  of  the  sea  Amer- 
ican ports  would  still  be  closed  to  them.10 
Indeed,  we  know  that  that  is  not  true  in  so  far  as 
food,  cotton,  etc.,  are  concerned,  as  the  American 
government  is  at  this  moment  doing  its  best  to 
see  that  the  American  merchant  shall  be  allowed 
to  sell  those  things  to  Germany. 

Most  Germans  to-day,  doubtless,  argue  that  if 
they  had  command  of  the  sea  they  could  buy 
munitions  and  supplies  from  America  just  as 
England  is  doing.  Indeed,  America's  formal  and 
legal  position  is:  We  are  prepared  to  sell  to  you 
if  you  can  fetch  the  goods.  It  enables  the  Ger- 
man Navy  League  to  say  with  some  show  of 
reason:  "Now  you  see  why  we  were  asking  for 
twice  as  many  ships  as  the  Reichstag  would  vote. 
If  we  had  got  them  you  would  have  seen  a  very 
different  story."  And  at  the  peace  settlement, 
which  is  quite  unlikely  to  witness  the  "destruc- 
tion" of  Austro-German  Europe,  or  render  new 
combinations  more  or  less  favourable  to  it  impos- 
sible, American  policy,  as  at  present  denned,  will 
be  but  an  added  incentive  to  the  further  rivalry 
of  naval  power.  But  if  the  defined  policy  of 
America  is  that  its  doors  are  closed  in  any  event 
to  the  powers  that  go  to  war  without  submission 

l°In  the  article  from  which  I  have  quoted  occurs  the  sentence : 
"If  the  Germans  wanted  to  buy  supplies  from  us  during  war 
they  should  have  planned  to  control  the  sea."  This  is  given  as 
pne  of  several  views  of  the  situation. 


218  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

of  their  case  to  enquiry,  the  case  is  entirely 
altered;  and  still  more  if  America  in  this  matter 
acts  practically  for  the  western  hemisphere. 
That  would  have  at  least  these  important  results : 
give  very  solid  reasons  to  the  Teutonic  powers 
for  accepting  international  judgment  of  its  case, 
add  weight  to  the  value  of  outside  opinion  (one 
of  the  difficulties  of  the  past  having  been  to  show 
Germany  that  that  was  a  thing  she  need  regard 
at  all),  and  to  the  importance  for  a  nation  of 
keeping  its  policy  right  with  it ;  and  would  detract 
very  largely  from  the  value  of  sea  power  used 
in  any  way  in  defiance  of  outside  opinion. 

But  such  an  action  on  America's  part,  or  in 
conjunction  with  other  nations,  could  only  be 
effective  if  it  represented  a  definite  and  pre- 
announced  policy.  Obviously  no  penalty,  whether 
in  municipal  or  international  action,  can  be  pre- 
ventive if  the  prospective  offender  is  unaware  of 
what  awaits  him.  Moreover,  to  leave  American 
decision  in  such  matters  to  the  accidental  circum- 
stances of  each  particular  case,  to  the  drift  of 
public  opinion  for  the  time  being,  subject  to  the 
lobbying  of  special  interests — cotton,  munitions 
(which  promise  to  become  the  greatest  of  all 
American  industries)  or  what  not — and  in  heaven 
knows  what  condition  of  internal  politics,  would 
deprive  the  action  of  any  real  value  in  this 
connection, 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    219 

Definite  proposals  are  indeed  now  being  made 
to  employ  this  economic  force  of  the  country  as 
against  Great  Britain  for  the  purpose  of  com- 
pelling her  to  give  greater  consideration  to  neu- 
tral trade  rights.  It  is  urged,  for  instance,  by 
Professor  Clapp,  in  his  book,  "The  Economic 
Aspects  of  the  War,"  n  that  the  threat  to  put  an 
embargo  on  arms  would  soon  restore  American 
right  to  trade  with  neutral  countries  and — within 
the  limits  allowed  under  the  Declaration  of  Lon- 
don— with  belligerent  countries  as  well.  Pro- 
fessor Clapp  recognises  that  to  carry  the  threat 
into  effect  (and  unless  there  is  a  possibility  at 
least  of  America  doing  so  it  would  be  disregarded 
by  England  as  bluff  and  so  remain  ineffective) 
might  mean  placing  a  very  grave  handicap  on 
England's  military  task,  and  so  give  Germany 
an  added  chance  of  victory.  But,  he  argues, 
neutrals  are  not  concerned  with  the  outcome  of 
a  war  to  which  they  are  not  a  party. 

Well,  apply  that  to  the  present  case.  If  Ger- 
many were  victorious,  Belgium  and  part  of 
France  annexed,  English  commercial  policy  in 
large  areas  replaced  by  German,  would  inter- 
national law,  the  integrity  of  the  smaller  states 
and  America's  general  international  position  be 
as  secure  as  in  the  case  of  British  victory? 
Rightly  or  wrongly  the  American  public  has  de- 

"Pp.  307-308. 


220  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

cided  that  they  would  not.  But  if  that  decision 
is  just,  to  facilitate  German  victory  for  trade  pur- 
poses is  to  sacrifice  a  large  permanent  interest 
for  a  relatively  smaller  and  temporary  one.  To 
base  remedial  action  on  the  assumption  that 
America  is  relatively  indifferent  to  the  issue  of 
the  war,  that  she  can  allow  the  action  which  she 
takes,  if  needs  be,  to  give  the  victory  to  Germany, 
is  to  disregard  the  decision  of  American  public 
opinion  on  essential  facts  of  the  case. 

That  brings  us  indeed  once  more  to  the  unreal- 
ity which  vitiates  both  the  existing  theory  and 
practice  of  neutrality.  Nevertheless  the  right 
course  is  for  America  to  protect  as  much  existing 
international  law  as  the  world  possesses,  and  to 
enlarge  that  if  possible  towards  the  recognition 
of  some  such  code  as  that  embodied  in  the 
Declaration  of  London.  Otherwise  we  might 
lose  what  there  is  with  little  assurance  that  we 
should  get  a  different  law  to  replace  it. 

Indeed  to  press  energetically  for  respect  of 
neutral  right  in  existing  circumstances  might 
conceivably  be  a  first  step  to  the  internationalisa- 
tion  of  the  economic  control  exercised  by  bel- 
ligerents: Belligerents  finding  themselves  ham- 
pered would  want  to  come  to  terms  with  neutrals, 
not  in  the  direction  of  surrendering  any  means 
of  carrying  on  a  war,  but  of  securing  sanction  of 
its  necessities.  This  they  might  achieve  by  making 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    221 

its  objects  such  as  to  promote  the  permanent 
interest  of  the  non-belligerent  nations. 

Surely  the  evidence  dealt  with  here  is  proof 
enough  of  this :  that,  even  if  we  could  secure  the 
formal  recognition  of  such  a  code  as  the  Declaja- 
tion  of  London,  there  is  no  assurance  in  our 
present  absence  of  sanctions  that  it  would,  in  all 
the  altering  circumstances  of  war,  be  observed  in 
future.  And  if  it  were  neutrals  would  still  suffer 
— in  some  cases  as  much  as  at  present,  because 
these  things  are  a  matter  mainly  of  the  hazards  of 
geography  and  commercial  intercourse — by  the 
operations  of  blockade  and  contraband;  and  still 
more  importantly,  of  course,  by  the  general  com- 
mercial chaos  occasioned  by  war.  Switzerland 
has  suffered  perhaps  as  much  as  any  neutral  in 
this  war:  and  no  Declaration  of  London  could 
protect  her. 

International  law  as  we  know  it  has  grown  up, 
not  as  the  result  of  definitely  thought  out  prin- 
ciples and  long  views  as  to  the  protection  of  the 
general  interest,  but  as  the  piecemeal  accumula- 
tion of  spasmodic  protest  against  isolated  injury 
to  neutral  trade.  The  neutral  has  in  effect  said: 
"We  don't  care  what  you  do  to  your  victim  but 
you  must  not  hurt  us."  The  momentary  incon- 
venience to  the  neutral  has  been  the  predominat- 
ing consideration. 

But  can  any  community  which  hopes  to  create 


222 

a  real  law  be  guided  by  such  a  standard  of  judg- 
ment? If  such  principles  guided  municipal  law 
we  should  find  the  State  concerning  itself  with 
and  punishing  very  severely  offences  like  ob- 
struction of  the  sidewalk  (because  of  their  imme- 
diate inconvenience)  but  being  "neutral"  to  the 
murder  of  old  people  or  infants  because  no  imme- 
diate inconvenience  to  the  general  public  was 
occasioned. 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  "the  father  of 
modern  international  law"  clearly  anticipated  the 
need  sooner  or  later  for  embodying  the  principle 
here  indicated  in  any  code  if  we  are  to  get  a  real 
society:  and,  of  course,  law  connotes  a  society. 

In  the  chapter  which  Grotius  devotes  to  the 
subject  of  neutrality  (lib.  Ill,  cap.  17)  he  sum- 
marises his  doctrine  as  follows: 

It  is  the  duty  of  those  who  stand  apart  from  a  war  to 
do  nothing  which  may  strengthen  the  side  which  has  the 
worse  cause  or  which  may  impede  the  motions  of  him 
who  is  carrying  on  a  just  war ;  and  in  a  doubtful  case  to 
act  alike  to  both  sides,  in  permitting  transit,  in  supplying 
provisions,  in  not  helping  persons  besieged. 

This  doctrine  has  been  condemned  as  absurdly 
impracticable  by  modern  lawyers,  but  its  imprac- 
ticability arises,  not  from  its  intrinsic  fallacy,  but 
from  the  failure  of  nations  to  organise  themselves. 
If  for  "worse  cause"  we  read :  "the  nation  which 
has  refused  to  submit  its  case  to  enquiry,"  so  as 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    223 

to  get  an  instant  and  ready  standard  of  judgment, 
it  will  be  seen  that  some  such  economic  co-opera- 
tion of  States  to  the  end  of  securing  an  inter- 
national sanction  for  law  as  that  suggested  in  the 
last  chapter  of  this  book,  is,  in  some  sense,  a 
realisation  of  the  Grotian  forecast  of  "neutrality." 

Grotius  rightly  foresaw  that  a  society  based 
on  the  general  principle  that  an  attack  on  one 
of  its  members  does  not  concern  it,  that  those 
not  attacked  can  remain  "neutral"  and  recog- 
nise any  rights  that  the  victorious  party  may 
establish  as  against  the  resistance  of  the  other,  is 
in  its  very  foundations  anti-social.  It  compels 
each  one  of  its  members  to  arm,  often  on  the 
standard  set  by  the  least  scrupulous,  and  tends,  at 
least,  to  make  power  the  measure  of  right. 

Such  a  conception  necessarily  produces  an- 
archy. Civilised  communities  within  the  state 
are  founded  upon  the  directly  contrary  principle, 
namely,  that  all  are  interested  in  resisting  aggres- 
sion because  if  one  is  victimised  with  impunity 
to-day  any  may  be  the  victim  to-morrow.  Illegal 
injury  to  one  is  injury  to  all,  and  in  such  case  the 
community  immediately  takes  sides.  It  takes 
sides  by  compelling  (through  its  collective  powers 
represented  in  the  police)  the  aggressor  in  the 
case  to  submit  to  third-party  judgment.  As  to 
which  is  the  aggressor,  it  settles  that  by  deciding 
that  it  is  the  party  which  uses  force  on  his  own 


224  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

judgment  to  secure  a  decision  in  his  own  case. 
It  may  be  true  in  a  disputed  case  that  B  owes  A 
a  certain  sum  of  money;  but  if  A  broke  into 
B's  house  and  took  it  he  would  be  arrested  for 
burglary.  The  community  would,  through  the 
police,  with  no  knowledge  of  the  merits  of  the 
case — and  not  needing  to  have  them — side  with  B. 

The  conceptions  of  neutrality  which  have  en- 
tered into  international  law  are,  of  course,  bound 
up  with  the  conceptions  of  sovereignty  and 
independence  which  the  more  morbid  moods  of 
nineteenth  century  nationalism  referred  to  at  the 
beginning  of  this  chapter  have  engendered. 
Underlying  those  moods  is  a  question  of  morals 
too  big  to  enter  into  just  here,  but  it  is  certain 
that  before  our  international  code  can  be  put 
upon  a  more  civilised  basis  we  shall  have  to  shed 
some  of  our  more  barbaric  nationalism.  We  talk 
of  sovereignty  and  independence  as  absolute 
things  in  the  case  of  nations  and  create  the  fiction 
that  states  are  accountable  to  no  sovereign  be- 
yond themselves.  But  "law"  and  the  complete 
independence  and  sovereignty  of  those  subject  to 
it,  are,  of  course,  contradictions  in  terms.  A 
"society"  made  up  of  "sovereign  and  independent 
units"  is  another.  Until  we  can  get  away  from 
some  of  these  assumptions  and  replace  them  by 
some  clearer  notions  of  the  real  relationship  of 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    225 

states,  international  law  will  be  founded  upon 
confusions  and  hugger  mugger. 

We  could  only  imagine  complete  sovereignty 
and  independence  if  each  nation  kept  to  itself. 
From  the  moment  that  it  has  contact  at  all  with 
others  and  enters  into  treaty  arrangements,  it 
has  surrendered  its  absolute  sovereignty  to  that 
of  its  bond.  Unless  we  get  back  to  the  Machia- 
vellian principle,  that  a  nation  is  not  even  bound 
by  its  bond,  we  cannot  maintain  the  fiction  of 
complete  sovereignty.  And,  of  course,  the  final 
sovereignty — the  social  obligation,  treaty  faith, 
what  you  will — is  representative  of  all.  The  sea 
is  symbolical  of  a  worldwide  social  unity.  It 
is  "one,"  and  the  ship  plying  between  two  coun- 
tries is  an  international  thing,  and  in  actual  prac- 
tice half  a  dozen  nationalities  may,  through  pas- 
sengers, cargo,  mail,  insurance,  be  concerned  in 
the  case  of  a  single  vessel.  How  can  those 
nationalities  be  either  "neutral"  or  "sovereign" 
in  any  absolute  sense  ? 

What  are  the  practical  conclusions  to  which  the 
whole  thing  points?  They  may  be  summarised 
thus: 

(i)  In  a  great  war  where  sea  operations  are 
involved  there  can  be  no  real  protection  of  non- 
combatant  nations  by  international  arrangements 
for  isolating  them  from  the  conflict ;  by  the  stiffen- 
ing of  neutral  right,  that  is. 


226  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

(2)  It  is  impossible  for  non-combatant  nations 
to  be  neutral  in  the  sense  of  impartial  as  between 
the  combatants;  the  command  of  the  sea  by  one 
belligerent  may  compel  their  economic  co-opera- 
tion  with   him;   or    geographical    position   and 
other  factors  may  make  a  country's  neutrality  of 
immense  value  to  one  party  and  an  immense 
handicap  to  the  other,  irrespective  of  whether  the 
neutral  nation's  interests  or  feelings  correspond 
with  such  favouring  of  the  one  as  against  the 
other. 

(3)  The  disposal  of  valuable  factors  of  this 
kind  should  not  be  left  to  chance,  but  should  be 
utilised   for   aiding   international   arrangements 
which  already  exist  in  embryo  for  the  protection 
of  the  integrity  of  states. 

(4)  The  sort  of  alliance  which  at  present  is 
effected  between  the  government  of  a  combatant 
state  and  the  citizens  of  a  "neutral"  one — as  in 
the  matter  of  controlling  Dutch  exports  through 
arrangements  with  Dutch  citizens,  and  the  fur- 
nishing of  American  credit — should  be  the  pre- 
rogative of  government,  duly  and  constitutionally 
using  those  forces  for  nationally-approved  pur- 
poses. 

(5)  Constructive  international  law  which  pro- 
ceeds on  the  principle  of  the  isolation  or  detach- 
ment of  states  not  directly  concerned  with  mili- 
tary co-operation  in  the  conflict,  is  bound  to  break 


NEUTRALITY  AND  SOVEREIGNTY    227 

down  owing  to  the  weight  of  the  forces  against 
it— the  complexity  of  international  contacts  which 
make  it  impossible  for  the  action  of  a  belligerent 
nation  not  to  affect  in  certain  cases  a  non-belliger- 
ent one. 

(6)  Rather  should  the  efforts  at  the  framing 
of  international  law  proceed  on  the  principle  that 
a  state,   in  order   to  secure  its  benefits,   must 
assume  certain  obligations  towards  other  nations 
which  have  pledged  themselves  to  render  the  law 
effective  by  similar  obligations. 

(7)  Though  the  assumption  of  such  obliga- 
tions would  give  to  international  law  a  reality  it 
does  not  at  present  possess,  their  burden  would 
not  be  greater  than  those  borne  by  neutrals  and 
non-combatants  under  past  and  present  conditions 
of  international  relationship. 

The  character  of  the  obligations  here  men- 
tioned is  explained  in  detail  in  the  concluding 
chapter  of  this  book.  The  suggestion  there  made 
would,  of  course,  link  international  law  to  inter- 
national politics,  would  compel  alliances  for  the 
protection  of  law  just  as  we  now  have  alliances 
for  the  protection  of  territory — like  the  treaty 
which  was  supposed  to  protect  Belgium  but  did 
not;  like  the  alliances  which  have  brought  the 
European  world  to  arms.  If  the  nations  had 
shown  as  great  a  readiness  to  assume  burdens 


228  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

for  the  enforcement  of  law  embodying  the  general 
interest,  as  for  political  and  territorial  interests, 
the  war  might  have  been  avoided. 

In  any  case  if,  after  the  war,  a  state  like  Bel- 
gium is  to  be  protected  at  all,  it  must  still  be  by 
means  of  a  treaty  of  some  kind.  We  talk  con- 
temptuously of  treaties,  but  do  we  propose  to 
leave  Belgium  after  the  war  dependent  upon  her 
own  force  alone?  Any  other  plan  involves  ar- 
rangements of  some  kind  between  the  nations, 
the  assumption  of  guarantee  obligations  by 
Belgium's  neighbours.  And  the  same  applies  to 
other  lesser  states. 

Since  international  contracts  of  some  kind 
therefore  there  must  be,  and  since  those  contracts 
are  obviously  frail  things,  likely  to  be  violated, 
the  only  recourse  is  to  give  them  as  many 
guarantors  as  possible.  To  ensure  this,  the 
obligations  under  the  guarantee  must  be  of  a 
kind  that  the  guarantors  can  discharge  without 
too  great  a  cost.  In  the  case  of  certain  states, 
an  undertaking  to  use  their  economic  influence — 
the  control  of  their  exports  and  imports  mainly — 
not  in  obedience  to  an  uncertain  law  of  neutrality, 
but  to  a  definite  law  designed  to  ensure  their 
national  protection,  would  be  a  lesser  burden  than 
military  obligation,  and  one  Just  as  effective  in 
many  cases,  and  would  be  less  costly  to  them  than 
is  the  present  system  and  its  total  results. 


If  the  struggle  for  power  is  the  struggle  of  rival 
groups  for  sustenance  in  a  world  of  limited  space  and 
opportunity,  if  war  is  really,  as  in  the  prevailing  con- 
ception it  is,  a  "struggle  for  bread,"  it  is  inevitable  be- 
tween men  and  will  go  on.  If  one  of  two  parties  must 
eat  the  other  the  two  cannot  come  to  a  really  amicable 
agreement  about  the  matter.  Even  if  this  is  not  the  case, 
but  mankind  remains  persuaded  that  it  is  so,  war  will 
also  continue.  But  in  that  case  it  would  be  a  struggle  not 
of  necessity,  but  of  misunderstanding  which  better  think- 
ing and  adjustment  could  dispose  of  as  it  disposed  of 
religious  wars,  the  cessation  of  which  proves  clearly  that 
some  of  man's  deepest  passions  can  be  redirected  by  a 
different  interpretation  of  facts — knowledge.  Is  the  "ex- 
pansion" of  states  a  real  need?  Nearly  all  political 
philosophy  and  public  discussion  avoid  that  question,  but 
until  we  have  made  up  our  mind  on  it  all  schemes  of 
world  organisation  must  necessarily  be  frustrated,  owing, 
among  other  factors,  to  the  elusive  processes  of  the 
psychology  of  fear. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  ULTIMATE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER 

UNDERLYING  all  the  questions  so  far  dis- 
cussed in  this  book — neutral  and  belligerent 
right,  Prussianism,  sea  power  as  a  part  of  the 
general  contest  for  political  power,  the  possibility 
of  co-operation  between  nations,  underlying  indeed 
all  problems  of  international  relationship  what- 
soever, is  one  ultimate  problem  which  I  can  most 
vividly  indicate  by  two  quotations,  one  of  which 
I  happened  to  have  used  elsewhere  but  which  I 
repeat  for  reasons  that  will  appear  presently. 

A  writer  in  the  English  "National  Review" — 
one  of  the  leading  anti-German  organs  during  the 
last  decade  or  so — in  an  article  which  appeared 
a  year  or  so  before  the  war,  said: 

Germany  must  expand.  Every  year  an  extra  million 
babies  are  crying  out  for  more  room,  and,  as  the  expan- 
sion of  Germany  by  peaceful  means  seems  impossible, 
Germany  can  only  provide  for  those  babies  at  the  cost  of 
potential  foes,  and  France  is  one  of  them. 

A  vanquished  France  might  give  Germany  all  she 
wants.  The  immense  colonial  possessions  of  France 
present  a  tantalising  and  provoking  temptation  to  Ger- 
man cupidity,  which,  it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  is 
not  mere  envious  greed,  but  stern  necessity.  The  same 
struggle  for  life  and  space  which  more  than  a  thousand 

231 


232  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

years  ago  drove  one  Teutonic  wave  after  another  across 
the  Rhine  and  the  Alps  is  now  once  more  a  great  compel- 
ling force.  Colonies  fit  to  receive  the  German  surplus  popu- 
lations are  the  greatest  need  of  Germany.  This  aspect  of 
the  case  may  be  all  very  sad  and  very  wicked,  but  it  is 
true.  .  .  .  Herein  lies  the  temptation  and  the  danger. 
Herein,  too,  lies  the  ceaseless  and  ruinous  struggle  of 
armaments,  and  herein  for  France  lies  the  dire  necessity 
of  linking  her  foreign  policy  with  that  of  powerful 
allies.1 

The  other  quotation  is  from  Mr.  Jerome  K. 
Jerome,  the  English  author  who  tells  us,  with 
prophetic  vision,  that  as  long  as  the  human  race 
endures  men  will  fight  about  their  national  ideals. 
It  has  to  be  accepted,  he  says,  as  a  fact  in  nature, 
not  in  any  way  to  be  altered  by  this  war  which  is 
only  one  round  in  a  never-ending  series  of  great 
games.  He  imagines  an  Englishman  outlining 
the  nature  of  the  game  that  he  is  playing  with 
the  Prussian  by  saying  to  the  latter : 

You  believe  that  God  has  called  upon  you  to  spread 
German  culture  through  the  lands.  You  are  ready  to  die 
for  your  faith.  And  we  believe  God  has  a  use  for  the 
thing  called  England.  Well,  let  us  fight  it  out.  There 
seems  no  other  way.  You  for  St.  Michael  and  we  for 
St.  George ;  and  God  be  with  us  both. 

Are  the  underlying  assumptions  of  these  two 
passages  true?  Is  it  true  that  nations  are  in- 

'Sept.,  1913. 


233 

cvitably  pushed  to  conflict  either  by  vital  needs 
of  sustenance,  "the  struggle  for  bread";  or  by 
an  irreconcilable  antagonism  of  ideal,  or  by  both  ? 

I  will  put  the  question  in  less  absolute  form: 
Does  military  victory  and  the  consequent  increase 
of  political  power  over  others  that  it  gives,  achieve 
for  a  people  great  material  or  moral  advantage — 
promote  their  commerce  and  culture  for  example  ? 

These  are  the  ultimate  questions  in  interna- 
tional politics.  They  underlie  not  merely  the 
competition  of  the  Great  Powers  for  colonies  and 
territories,  the  intrigues  of  the  Chancelleries,  but 
the  whole  problem  of  nationality  and  self-govern- 
ment, Imperialism  and  Home  Rule;  not  merely 
the  differences  about  Egypt  and  Morocco  and  the 
partition  of  Africa,  but  the  struggles  of  race, 
language,  religion,  in  South  Eastern  Europe,  the 
emancipation  of  peoples  from  alien  domination, 
the  final  political  situation  of  Belgium,  of  Alsace, 
of  Poland,  of  Bohemia,  of  Austria,  Balkan  policy 
generally,  the  expansion  of  Russia,  Italian  irre- 
dentism.  A  mere  knowledge  of  the  detailed 
fact  is  of  no  avail  unless  we  realise  the  general 
meaning  of  the  facts:  we  may  fail  to  see  the 
forest  for  the  trees.  If  we  are  to  have  any 
reasoned  opinion  about  our  own  future  policy  in 
the  world — on  preparedness  and  its  nature,  the 
character  of  future  alliances,  the  causes  we  should 
support  and  those  we  should  condemn — we  must 


234  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

answer  in  our  minds  the  question  of  principle 
involved  in  the  two  quotations  just  cited. 

This  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  when  we 
have  answered  those  questions,  and  answered 
them  truly,  we  shall  have  solved  all  international 
difficulties.  It  merely  means  that  an  obstacle 
which  prevents,  and  which  of  itself  suffices  to 
prevent,  their  being  solved  will  have  been  re- 
moved. Until  we  got  rid  of  the  notion  that 
pestilence  was  a  visitation  of  God,  prophylactic 
medicine  wras  impossible  (as  it  is  in  the  East  to- 
day where  that  belief  prevails) .  And  the  destruc- 
tion of  that  fallacy  was  not  the  less  essential 
because  there  are  terrible  diseases  with  which 
medicine  cannot  deal  at  all.  But  until  the  world 
could  shake  itself  free  from  the  old  fatalism  it 
was  not  even  on  the  right  road  in  its  fight  with 
disease. 

It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  the  very  elemen- 
tary truth  that  this  illustrates,  because  it  will  be 
said  that  to  reduce  international  politics  to  a 
general  principle  like  that  dealt  with  in  this  chap- 
ter is  to  be  guilty  of  over-simplification;  to  dis- 
regard difficulties  of  detail,  to  settle  complex  prob- 
lems with  generalities  and  formulae.  A  vast 
amount  of  criticism  of  this  kind  seems  to  ignore 
the  real  function  of  a  general  principle. 

So  long  as  the  world  believes — although  the 
belief  may  be  a  barely  conscious  one — that  the 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  235 

answer  to  the  suggested  questions  is  "yes,"  and 
that  states  are  condemned  by  a  necessity  of 
nature,  a  law  beyond  human  control  to  exist  in 
perpetual  and  inevitable  antagonism,  we  shall 
develop  neither  the  intention  nor  the  energy 
necessary  to  carry  into  effect  that  international 
co-operation  which  might  put  us  fairly  on  the  road 
to  some  solution  of  our  difficulties.  To  believe, 
however  vaguely  or  undefinedly,  that  in  questions 
of  war  and  peace  we  are  the  puppets  of  forces 
outside  ourselves  will  prevent  our  forming  that 
"Will"  without  which  there  can  certainly  in  this 
matter  be  no  way. 

And  the  way  will  be  just  as  impossible  of  dis- 
covery so  long  as  nations  believe  that  they  must 
either  be  swallowed  by  others  or  be  in  a  position 
to  swallow  them.  With  that  belief  in  the  back- 
ground of  consciousness  policy  would  inevitably 
drift  in  one  direction;  and  no  effort  could  per- 
manently succeed  in  re-directing  it  until  that 
belief  had  been  destroyed. 

Now,  it  is  one  of  the  grimmest  humours  of  the 
war  that  the  thing  which  everyone,  taking  due 
thought,  admits  to  be  the  basic  issue,  is  the  one 
thing  that,  practically  speaking,  has  never  been 
raised  as  between  the  nations;  only  various  inci- 
dents arising  out  of  that  issue,  not  the  issue  itself. 
Not  merely  has  it  no  place  in  the  vast  official 
literature  that  fills  the  various  bulky  blue,  white, 


236  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

orange,  red,  green,  and  grey  books,  but  it  has 
never  been  discussed  as  between  the  peoples 
through  their  press,  their  writing,  their  daily  talk 
in  the  way  that  issues  between  Liberals  and  Con- 
servatives, Republicans  or  Democrats,  Suffragists 
and  anti-Suffragists,  vegetarians  and  carnivora 
are  discussed. 

The  people  of  Europe  have  not  asked  them- 
selves: Why  do  nations  want  to  govern  each 
other  instead  of  themselves?  Is  that  desire  a 
fixed  thing,  or  something  that  can  be  changed, 
like  opinion  in  politics?  Do  they  really  need 
each  other's  territory  ?  Can  we  so  arrange  things 
in  Europe  that  the  German,  without  murdering 
us  now,  will  be  able  to  feed  his  children  of  the 
future?  What  is  it  precisely  that  he  needs  to 
that  end  ?  Is  there  any  means  of  letting  him  have 
it  that  would  not  hurt  us? 

As  little  has  the  ordinary  German  put  seriously 
to  himself  the  question:  "Have  we  any  more 
reason  for  compelling  other  people  to  accept  our 
culture  than  for  compelling  them  to  accept  our 
religion?" 

Of  the  elements  of  these  problems  the  public 
of  all  three  countries  are  profoundly  ignorant. 
They  have  gathered  up  catchwords  about  places 
in  the  sun,  fulfilling  national  destiny,  the  inevit- 
ability of  struggle,  all  of  which  creates  a  vague 
sense  of  resentment  of  the  other  man's  intentions, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  237 

and  that  is  all.  The  blue  and  red  books  are,  of 
course,  even  farther  away  from  the  realities  than 
the  public  talk  and  writing.  Here  for  years  the 
peoples  which  compose  the  allied  nations  of  the 
west  had  been  alleging  an  evident  intention  on 
the  part  of  Germany  to  establish  a  military 
tyranny  over  them ;  the  Teutonic  peoples  had  for 
the  same  period  been  alleging  the  evident  inten- 
tion of  her  political  rivals  to  "encircle"  her.  Yet 
in  the  immense  mass  of  official  despatches  which 
were  exchanged  during  the  crisis  that  preceded 
this  war  those  things  are  barely  mentioned:  just 
a  vague  and  distant  hint  once  or  twice. 

And  the  public  discussion,  that  of  the  press  and 
political  writers,  concerning  the  alleged  rival  am- 
bitions of  the  various  parties — the  intention  of 
Germany  through  Austria  to  dominate  the  Bal- 
kans, and  so  Asia  Minor,  and  so  perhaps  the 
world ;  the  intention  of  Russia  to  protect  the  Slav 
peoples  from  this  alien  domination;  the  necessity 
for  England,  in  terms  of  the  Balance  of  Power 
principle,  to  prevent  the  establishment  on  the 
channel  of  an  overwhelming  continental  power — 
was  all  carried  on  in  such  a  way,  owing  mainly  to 
the  conventions  of  secrecy  and  hugger  mugger 
that  characterise  European  diplomacy,  as  to  de- 
generate into  accusations  of  intended  aggression 
and  little  more. 

Despite  all  the  oceans  of  talk  that  went  on 


238  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

before  the  war  concerning  the  planned  invasion 
of  England  by  Germany,  the  contemplated  de- 
struction of  France,  and  Germany's  allegations  of 
"encirclement,"  we  do  not  to-day  know  how  far 
the  mutual  accusations  were  true.2  The  final 
action  of  each  group  was  based  on  an  assumption 
concerning  the  other,  the  truth  of  which  that 
other  denied  and  continues  to  deny — to  such 
degree  that  both  sides  have  managed  honestly  to 
convince  themselves  that  they  are  fighting  a 
purely  defensive  war. 

During  all  those  years  the  social  democratic 
party  in  Germany,  for  instance,  could  not  tell, 
because  it  did  not  know,  the  policy  for  which  Ger- 
many stood.  Not  merely  the  British  Parliament, 
but  the  members  of  the  British  Cabinet,  a  week 
before  the  declaration  of  war  did  not  know  for 
what  policy  England  stood,  whether  England 
would  participate.  One  member  of  the  Cabinet 
says  that  but  for  Belgium  England  would  never 
have  been  brought  in ;  another  says  that  Belgium 

3The  London  "Nation,"  which  has  shown  itself,  because  of  its 
Liberalism  in  politics,  perhaps  most  energetically  anti-German 
and  enthusiastically  pro-war,  says,  more  than  a  year  after 
the  outbreak  (Sept.  4,  1915)  :  "The  main  object  for  which  the 
saner  German  Imperialists  are  fighting  is  the  Empire  of  the  East. 
The  picking  up  of  scattered  colonies  is  only  a  secondary  aim 
and  the  annexation  of  Belgium  is  the  dream  of  extremists.  The 
goal  of  the  main  official  body  is  to  win  that  political  and  military 
predominance  in  Turkey  from  which  a  sort  of  economic  monopoly 
might  follow." 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  239 

or  no  Belgium,  England  would  have  been  brought 
in  to  destroy  a  tyranny  that  threatened  her 
existence. 

The  discussion  of  motive  and  intention  is  of 
little  avail  here.  We  don't  even  know  our  own 
motives  as  individuals;  less  even  can  we  know 
the  motive  of  millions  of  differing  fellow  country- 
men; less  yet  those  of  foreign  countries.  One 
may  hear  a  political  wiseacre  solemnly  descanting 
on  the  "intention"  of  this  or  that  foreign  country, 
to  do  this  or  that  thing,  some  years  hence.  Yet 
if  you  were  to  ask  this  same  wiseacre  the  inten- 
tion of  his  own  country  in  some  such  simple 
matter  as  suffrage,  or  the  next  Presidential  elec- 
tion, what  it  would  do,  not  some  years,  but  six 
months  hence,  he  could  not  tell  you — to  save  his 
immortal  soul. 

What  we  have  to  establish  is  not  intention  or 
motive,  but  need,  necessity;  and  then  interest, 
moral  and  material. 

In  the  questions  which  underlie  the  two  quota- 
tions I  have  given,  there  is,  of  course,  a  very  sig- 
nificant difference :  If  we  admit  that  an  increasing 
population  like  the  German  must  either  expand 
its  frontiers  or  starve,  conquer  or  be  without  food, 
war,  of  course,  will  go  on,  because  you  cannot 
ask  a  whole  population  to  commit  suicide.  Nor, 
if  it  is  a  question  of  one  surviving  at  the  cost  of 
the  other,  can  there  be  any  real  possibility  of 


240  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

agreement  between  them.  It  would  only  last  as 
long  as  the  pressure  of  population  on  the  soil  was 
not  really  severe.  As  well  might  two  cannibals 
say:  "Since  one  of  us  has  got  to  eat  the  other,  let 
us  come  to  some  amicable  agreement  about  it." 

And  even  though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there 
was  no  necessity  whatever  for  either  to  eat  the 
other,  agreement  would  be  just  as  impossible  so 
long  as  each  believed  in  that  necessity.  For  the 
false  belief  would  have  the  same  effect  on  the 
conduct  of  both  as  though  that  belief  were  true. 
But  in  that  case  their  conflict  would  be  the  out- 
come, not  of  necessity  at  all,  but  of  a  mistake; 
of  misunderstanding  of  certain  facts. 

So  with  nations:  the  fact  that  there  is  no  in- 
evitable rivalry  between  them  based  on  conflicting 
needs,  the  fact  that  the  whole  idea  is  a  mistake, 
will  not  necessarily  stop  war  between  them.  War 
might  take  place  because  nations  wrongly  believed 
their  needs  to  be  irreconcilable.  But,  again,  in 
that  case  also,  it  would  be  a  conflict  of  misunder- 
standing. And  that  is  why  we  need  widespread 
discussion. 

But,  assuming  the  idea  that  nations  must 
struggle  with  one  another  for  their  sustenance 
in  a  world  of  limited  space  and  opportunity  to  be 
a  true  one,  there  is  this  difference  between  that 
conflict  and  the  conflict  of  ideals.  I  may  acquire 
another  man's  ideal,  "capture"  it  in  the  sense  of 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  241 

adopting  it,  but  he  still  has  it.  But  if  I  take  his 
property  he  hasn't. 

And  that  is  rather  an  important  difference. 

Now  the  main  reason  which  leads  people  to 
avoid  discussion  of  this  whole  subject  is  the  plea 
that  man's  conduct  is  not  affected  by  discussion. 
It  is  argued,  as  Mr.  Jerome  argues  in  the  quota- 
tion I  have  made  from  him,  that  whether  the 
struggle  for  political  power  serve  any  purpose  or 
not,  is  well  or  ill  founded,  necessary  or  unneces- 
sary, men  always  have  struggled  for  power  and 
that  consequently  the  motives  of  such  struggle  are 
something  fixed,  which  no  amount  of  "talk"  or 
reason  or  logic  will  change.  That  it  is  "in  human 
nature." 

Which,  of  course,  is  bad  psychology  and  worse 
history.  Some  of  the  strongest  passions  and 
motives  that  have  played  the  greatest  part  in 
history,  such  as  those  which  for  centuries  led  the 
populations  of  Europe  to  pour  out  their  blood  like 
water,  and  their  wealth  like  trash,  for  the  re- 
covery of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  or  later  drove 
them  in  rival  religious  parties  one  against  the 
other  until  countries  were  depopulated  and  king- 
doms ruined,  are  passions  and  motives  that  have 
been  so  transformed  by  discussion  and  change  of 
view  and  attitude,  that  we  cannot  even  under- 
stand them.  When  the  Europe  which  had  fought 
during  two  centuries  for  the  Holy  Sepulchre  could 


242  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

have  had  it  for  the  asking,  it  did  not  even  ask. 
The  French  Catholic  has  not  merely  stopped  kill- 
ing the  Huguenot,  he  has  stopped  wanting  to, 
which  is  far  more  remarkable.  "Nationalism"  3 
as  a  passion  in  politics  is  a  modern  creation 
resting  upon  a  certain  conception  of  certain 
facts  which  discussion  and  literature,  and  that 
accumulation  of  them  which  we  call  tradition, 
has  formed  in  quite  modern  times.  To  say 
that  the  direction  of  our  passions  cannot  be 
changed  by  our  interpretation  of  facts,  by  "logic" 
if  you  will,  is,  of  course,  to  be  guilty  of  ignorant 
confusions.  If  you  see  your  enemy,  Smith,  going 
down  the  street,  you  may  want  to  murder  him ;  if 
he  turns  round  and  you  see  that  the  man  is  not 
Smith  at  all  but  your  very  good  friend  Brown, 
your  purely  intellectual  perception  of  a  fact — 
due  to  a  piece  of  pure  "logic,"  enabling  you 
to  conclude  that  a  fur  coat  resembling  Smith's 
had  caused  a  false  induction — changes  altogether 
the  direction  of  your  feeling.  Some  of  the  bitter- 
est passions  in  nations  are  due  to  mistaking 

3This  word  is  used  to-day  indifferently  to  describe  the  pan- 
German,  or  the  Italian  who  dreams  of  Italy  dominating  the 
world  as  a  resuscitated  Rome,  and  the  German  who  expelled 
Napoleon  or  the  Italian  who  freed  his  states  from  the  Austrian 
or  the  Balkan  populations  who  rose  against  the  tyranny  of  the 
Turk.  But  surely  the  two  are  very  different  ideals.  The 
earlier  nationalism  was  in  large  part  a  revolt  against  sheer 
political  oppression;  its  later  development  is  an  Imperialism 
based  on  race  superiority. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  243 

Brown  for  Smith ;  and  a  clearer  knowledge  of  the 
fact  and  clearer  thinking  about  it  will  redirect 
those  passions. 

Dogmatically  to  assume,  therefore,  that  be- 
cause nations  do  desire  power  and  territory,  there- 
fore they  must,  and  that  it  is  not  worth  discus- 
sion, is  to  show  one's  inability  to  face  even  simple 
facts.  The  idea  that  a  national  culture  should 
be  imposed  by  force  of  arms  upon  an  unwilling 
people — and,  of  course,  if  no  nation  wanted  to  im- 
pose it,  no  nation  would  have  to  go  to  war  to  resist 
its  imposition — is  a  conception  of  what  constitutes 
a  worthy  and  noble  national  ideal,  certainly  as 
much  subject  to  modification  by  discussion  as  were 
those  other  abandoned  ideals  that  bled  Europe  for 
some  centuries.4  It  may  be  that  nations  do  fight 
to-day  simply  to  dominate,  "to  show  that  they  are 
boss,"  to  impose  their  political  religion.  But  can 
we  dogmatise  and  say  that  the  human  mind  is 
incapable  of  realising  that  such  an  ambition  is  a 
tawdry  and  shoddy  one  ?  On  what  ground  do  we 
allege  that  the  human  mind  is  incapable  of  seeing 
this:  That  if  you  can't  convince  your  neighbour 
of  the  superiority  of  your  political  ideas  by  fair 
argument,  you  are  certainly  not  going  to  do  so 

4 We  need  not  conclude  that  the  modern  European  has  no 
feeling  for  religion.  That  feeling  is  probably  deeper  than  ever. 
What  he  has  lost  is  the  idea  that  anything  of  worth  in  it  can 
be  "imposed"  upon  a  people  by  defeating  their  armies,  or  that 
such  defeats  are  relevant  in  any  way  to  religious  conviction. 


244  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

by  burning  his  house  down  and  murdering  his 
wife?  To  insist  that  such  a  notion  of  national 
"dignity"  must  for  all  time  be  the  possession  of 
mankind  is  a  curious  plea  coming  from  those  who 
profess  to  see  in  these  military  struggles  the 
higher  manifestations  of  the  human  spirit. 

*     * 

All  that  may  apply,  it  will  be  urged,  to  the 
moral  side  of  the  problem.  But  what  of  the 
brutal,  physical  side;  of  the  view  that  this  con- 
test for  territorial  expansion  and  political  power 
giving  commercial  privileges  and  advantage 
does  indeed  represent  a  part  of  man's  "struggle 
for  bread,"  for  survival;  that  expanding  popu- 
lations must  secure  more  territory  or  expose 
themselves  or  their  descendants  to  starvation?  If 
that  is  true,  no  argument,  no  talk  will  alter  it.  It 
is  a  physical  fact  as  regrettable  as  you  like,  but 
a  fact  in  nature. 

I  have  said  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter 
that  that  is  a  question  which,  speaking  broadly, 
no  government  or  people  have  thought  it  worth 
while  to  discuss.  In  the  disputes  of  the  diplomats 
as  of  the  general  public,  it  has  been  assumed  al- 
most as  an  axiom  that,  of  course,  this  contest  for 
territory  is  in  fact  the  "struggle  for  life"  among 
nations;  that  changes  of  frontier  are  not  of  the 
nature  of  other  political  changes — like  that  from 
Republican  to  Democratic  rule,  or  vice  versa. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  245 

Never,  it  is  assumed,  could  such  things  be  a 
matter  of  normal  political  discussion  and  re- 
adjustment, maintaining  by  such  means,  more  or 
less,  the  required  equilibrium.  It  is  an  irreconcil- 
able conflict  to  be  determined  only  by  force. 

A  few  specialists  have,  it  is  true,  discussed 
these  things  in  books  which  the  public  as  a  whole 
don't  read.  But,  even  with  those  specialists,  the 
"ultimate"  question  is  generally  settled  by  an 
unquestioned  adoption  of  the  orthodox  assump- 
tion concerning  the  value  of  political  power. 
Admiral  Mahan,  for  instance,  will  discuss  with 
acuteness  and  learning,  through  large  volumes, 
the  place  of  sea  power  as  an  instrument  of  inter- 
national rivalry,  but  this  last  question  was  one 
which,  as  the  circumstances  of  a  discussion  with 
the  present  writer  showed,  he  had  not  asked  him- 
self with  any  clearness  since  he  answered  in  one 
way,  in  one  mood,  and  in  an  exactly  contrary 
way  in  another. 

The  extent  to  which  this  is  general  among  the 
specialists  may  be  gathered  from  a  book  like 
Professor  Usher's  "Pan-Americanism,"  written 
since  the  war,  and  which  deals  with  prob- 
lems presenting  themselves  for  solution  after- 
wards. This  book  is  described  as  "a  forecast  of 
the  inevitable  clash  between  the  United  States 
and  Europe's  victor,"  and  the  author  essays  to 
present  the  views  of  the  various  sections  and 


246  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

interests  in  the  country.  Underlying  practically 
every  view  presented,  however  contradictory 
otherwise,  is  the  assumption  accepted  virtually 
without  discussion,  that  the  industrial  nations  at 
least  are  rivals  in  trade,  that  what  one  gets  the 
other  loses,  and  that  their  economic  development 
represents  a  competition  for  strictly  limited  "mar- 
kets," and  that  out  of  this  arises  a  conflict  deeply 
rooted  in  real  sustenance  need.  Germany  is  repre- 
sented as  being  impelled  by  these  needs  to  "strike 
a  crushing  blow  at  her  adversary's  prosperity" 
(p.  149)  and  England  looking  upon  even  the 
United  States  as  a  "dangerous  rival,  whose 
foreign  trade  is  to  be  checked  by  British  military 
and  naval  power"  (p.  158).  The  view  that 
political  power,  even  in  peace,  determines  the  cur- 
rents of  trade,  is  carried  so  far  that  the  develop- 
ment of  Central  American  trade  with  the  United 
States  during  the  last  fifteen  years  is  gravely 
ascribed  to  the  withdrawal  of  the  British  fleet  to 
European  waters  during  that  period,  thus  "giving 
the  naval  supremacy  of  the  Western  Hemisphere 
into  American  hands."  And  when  the  destruction 
of  the  German  fleet  places  that  supremacy  once 
more  in  British  hands,  England  will,  by  some 
unexplained  process,  use  her  "supremacy"  to  pre- 
vent further  development  of  American  trade  in 
that  direction. 

The   following   passages   indicate   sufficiently 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  247 

the  dominant  assumptions  of  Professor  Usher's 
discussions : 

Foreign  markets,  expanding  markets,  are  necessary 
for  the  defence  of  the  future  and  the  greater  good  to  the 
greater  number  yet  to  be  born  justifies  a  war  of  apparent 
aggression  to  ensure  their  welfare  (p.  119).  They  see 
clearly  in  Europe  that  the  most  vital  interest  of  the  state 
is  economic,  because  economic  prosperity  is  the  founda- 
tion of  political  independence,  of  national  unity,  and  of 
international  status ;  they  see  that  prosperity  depends 
upon  the  continuance  of  the  rate  of  growth,  and  that 
political  and  military  action  ought  to  protect  and  further 
those  economic  interests.  The  present  European  con- 
flicts are  based  primarily  upon  those  economic  conten- 
tions. This,  then,  is  an  economic  war — a  war  for  mar- 
kets, for  colonies,  for  dependencies,  in  which  markets 
may  be  developed,  for  access  and,  perhaps,  preferential 
rights  in  those  of  Asiatic  communities.  Precisely  those 
factors  are  already  present  in  the  United  States,  and,  if 
precedent  be  any  criterion,  will  before  long  lead  our 
statesmen  and  citizens  to  a  conviction  that  the  supreme 
duty  of  the  state  is  to  provide  for  the  economic  welfare 
of  its  citizens,  whence  it  is  but  a  step  to  territorial  ex- 
pansion, to  an  insistence  upon  new  markets,  secured  by 
political,  diplomatic,  and,  it  may  be,  military  and  naval 
agencies. 

It  is  true  that  in  his  chapter  on  the  Monroe 
doctrine  he  intimates  that  it  is  not  expedient  for 
the  United  States  to  quarrel  with  Europe,  to 
extend  our  relations  with  Latin  America,  but  by 
his  emphasis  throughout  on  the  general  concep- 


248  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

tion  implied  in  this  passage  makes  it  also  pretty 
plain  that  America  may  well  have  to  choose  be- 
tween her  fundamental  future  interests  and  her 
desire  to  live  unaggressively  at  peace. 

Now,  the  present  writer  happens  to  be  one  of 
those  who  have  maintained  (in  books  mostly  un- 
read even  when  discussed  by  the  general  public) 
that  there  are  certain  fundamental  "illusions" — 
economic,  political,  biological — at  the  basis  of  this 
whole  theory  of  the  necessary  rivalry  of  states. 
The  grounds  upon  which  he  has  challenged  what 
is  undoubtedly  a  prevailing  conception,  cannot  be 
repeated  here.5  They  do  not  constitute,  by  any 

'America  will  lose  nothing  by  European  development  eco- 
nomically in  South  America,  nor  Europe  by  ours;  and  if  clash 
comes  it  will  come,  not  from  any  necessary  hostility  of  interest, 
but  from  misunderstanding  of  interest.  All  the  talk  of  the 
inevitable  clash  for  markets  leaves  out  of  account  half  the 
facts.  If  we  want  expanding  markets  in  South  America  we 
should  welcome  the  investment  of  European  money  therein; 
if  we  want  to  sell  harvesters  to  Argentina  we  should  be  glad 
to  have  Europe  buy  her  wheat;  and  if  Europe  is  to  buy  her 
wheat  Europeans  must  sell  something  in  some  foreign  market 
wherewith  to  get  the  money  and  so  become  our  competitors 
somewhere.  A  market  is  not  a  place  where  things  are  sold,  it 
is  a  place  where  things  are  bought  and  sold ;  and  the  one 
operation  is  impossible  without  the  other,  a  fact  which  makes 
our  competitors  necessary  to  our  markets  and  our  markets 
impossible  without  our  competitors.  "America"  is  no  more  a 
"rival,"  dangerous  or  otherwise,  of  Great  Britain  or  Germany 
than  Virginia  is  a  rival  of  Missouri.  These  political  units  are 
not  economic  units  at  all,  nor  are  they  trading  corporations;  to 
the  extent  to  which  there  is  economic  competition  and  rivalry 
it  goes  on  between  individuals  and  not  between  states.  These 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  249 

means,  a  whole  cloth  new  theory  of  the  relation- 
ship of  states.  They  are  more  the  development 
and  definite  application  to  current  problems,  of 
principles,  the  beginnings  of  which  can  be  found 
in  the  arguments  of  the  physiocrats,  two  hundred 
odd  years  since,  and  which  every  economist  has 
since  in  some  measure  developed.  Happily,  it  is 
not  a  purely  economic  case.  It  does  not  rest  upon 
showing  the  cost  of  war,  more  or  less,  or  whether 
it  pays  more  or  less,  but  upon  the  existence  of  an 

things  are,  of  course,  very  elementary  economics,  and  this  is 
not  the  place  to  develop  them,  but  the  whole  fabric  of  "inevit- 
ability" of  struggle  for  economic  ends  between  nations  falls  to 
pieces  when  due  account  is  taken  of  them. 

To  the  extent  to  which  the  old  economic  misconceptions 
dominate  international  politics  they  do  so  by  virtue  of  the 
momentum  of  old  ideas.  It  is  always  a  slow  process  by  which 
better  thinking  gets  translated  into  political  action.  For  a 
century  and  a  half,  or  more,  from  the  days  when  David  Hume 
poured  his  contempt  upon  the  "narrow  and  malignant  opinion" 
that  one  nation  had  any  interest  in  checking  the  economic  ex- 
pansion of  another,  and  prayed  "not  only  as  a  man  but  as  a 
British  subject  for  the  prosperity  of  Spain,  of  the  Germanics, 
aye,  and  even  of  France,"  the  economists  almost  to  a  man  have 
thought  one  way  and  the  politicians  acted  another.  For  the 
philosophy  of  political  aggression  does  not  get  its  main  inspira- 
tion from  the  economists,  or  even  from  the  traders  and  mer- 
chants, but  from  the  Bernhardis,  Treitschkes,  or  the  popular 
admirals,  generals,  and  politicians  who  have  seldom  been  econo- 
mists even  of  the  most  elementary  kind.  But  this  lagging  of 
political  action  behind  the  best  contemporary  thought  is  not 
merely  true  of  international  relations.  Montaigne  was  laughing 
at  witchcraft  two  hundred  years,  and  most  educated  men  a  hun- 
dred years,  before  the  politicians  and  lawyers  stopped  burning 
witches. — From  a  Review  of  Professor  Usher's  Book. 


250  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

entirely  false  mental  picture  of  the  relation  of 
government  and  administration  to  those  activities 
by  which  the  mass  of  people  earn  their  livelihood 
and  live  their  lives.  Part,  at  least,  of  the  all  but 
universal  approval  of  power  in  one's  own  govern- 
ment comes  from  the  idea  that  by  the  exercise  of 
that  power,  especially  in  the  extension  of  terri- 
tory, annexation  of  colonies,  and  the  like,  there  is 
a  definite  accretion  of  wealth  to  the  annexing 
power. 

That,  of  course,  implies  a  confusion  of  thought. 
A  country  which  annexes  a  province  has  not  added 
to  the  wealth  of  the  original  inhabitants  of  that 
country  any  more  than  a  city  which  takes  an 
outlying  suburb  into  its  administration  adds  to 
the  wealth  of  the  original  inhabitants  of  the  city. 
The  change  may,  or  may  not,  be  of  advantage; 
there  may  be  some  administrative  economy,  and 
so  some  reduction  of  taxation  for  the  citizens  of 
the  new  administrative  area  as  a  whole,  and 
something  similar  may  take  place  on  the  annexa- 
tion of  a  province  by  a  national  government 
(though  generally  the  reverse  is  the  case).  But 
the  point  is  that  to  the  ordinary  mind  the  two 
operations  are  not  upon  the  same  plane.  In  the 
case  of  the  city  there  is  no  widespread  illusion 
that  New  Yorkers  now  "own"  this  or  that  suburb, 
and  have  added  something  to  their  wealth  thereby, 
and  no  New  Yorker  would  dream  for  a  moment 


THE  PROBLEM  OE  POWER  251 

of  shedding  his  blood  or  giving  the  lives  of  his 
children  for  bringing  about  such  a  change;  or 
talk  of  the  need  of  the  city's  expansion  for 
his  children's  sake.  If  the  new  suburb  didn't 
want  to  come  in,  let  them  stay  out.  It  would  not 
be  regarded  as  a  life  and  death  matter.  But  if 
Austria  wants  to  annex  a  Servian  province,  or 
Germany  a  French  one — which  adds  not  one  iota 
to  the  economic  or  moral  welfare  of  the  average 
Austrian  or  German,  which,  indeed,  complicates 
his  politics,  adds  to  his  military  burdens,  to  his 
risks  of  attack  from  other  nations — the  dire  cost 
is  all  assumed  as  a  sacrifice  on  behalf  of  his  father- 
land's destiny;  in  order,  that  is,  that  the  central 
administrations  of  these  territories  may  be  Berlin 
instead  of  Paris,  or  Vienna  instead  of  Belgrade.6 
Obviously,  the  two  operations  are  not  judged 
by  him  in  the  same  light :  he  sees  in  one  all  sorts 
of  important  considerations — economic,  cultural, 
moral,  social,  what  you  will — that  he  does  not 
see  in  the  other.  Yet  in  terms  of  the  realities  of 
human  life  they  are  about  upon  the  same  plane. 

*It  will  be  noted  that  I  have  chosen  examples  from  the 
attempt  to  impose  rule  on  other  people,  not  from  the  attempts 
to  resist  foreign  rule.  Wars  of  nationality  are  caused  not  by 
a  man's  preference  for  his  own  country  but  by  the  attempt  to 
destroy  that  preference,  to  make  someone  else  accept  a  foreign- 
er's rule — our  rule.  If  all  respected  the  preference  of  men  for 
their  own  nationality  the  wars  of  nationality  would  cease,  like 
the  wars  of  religion ;  and  for  the  same  reason. 


252  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

The  whole  picture  that  he  has  in  his  mind  as  to 
what  happens  in  the  case  of  conquest  is  a  false 
one.  The  essential  untruth  of  that  picture — 
which,  obviously,  is  not  just  a  matter  of  statistics 
of  cost  and  expenditure  in  war — is  what  I  have 
attempted  to  show  in  earlier  works.  The  fact 
that  it  is  a  general  idea  and  not  a  matter  of 
statistics  which  is  involved  is  important,  for 
this  reason:  If  the  truth  did  depend  upon  statis- 
tics, if  the  public,  before  it  could  have  right 
ideas  upon  the  subject,  had  to  become  familiar 
with  elaborate  theorems,  as  in  the  case  for 
Free  Trade  or  Protection,  the  outlook  for  sound 
general  judgment  would  be  very  poor.  But  much 
less  than  that  is  needed.  In  order  to  shake  off 
the  obsessions  of  witchcraft,  it  was  not  necessary 
for  mankind  as  a  whole  to  pass  judgment  upon 
the  learned  discussions  running  through  thou- 
sands of  volumes  that  marked  the  debate  on  that 
subject  during  a  century  or  two.  It  sufficed  that, 
having  shaken  itself  free  from  the  hypnotism  of 
false  theories,  it  was  able  to  see  the  common  daily 
facts  of  life  straight. 

In  the  same  way,  when  certain  old  Roman  and 
Feudal  prepossessions  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
State,  and  its  relationship  to  the  wealth  it  ad- 
ministers, have  been  shaken  off,  it  will  not  take 
an  economist  nor  an  historian  to  see  that  the 
citizens  of  a  little  State  like  Sweden,  or  Switzer- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  253 

land,  without  political  power,  without  colonies, 
having  enjoyed  no  conquest,  are  by  every  real 
test  of  well  being,  moral  or  material,  as  well  off 
as  the  citizens  of  great  military  empires  that  have 
spent  blood  and  treasure  immeasurable  upon 
securing  their  "place  in  the  sun."  It  is  as  possible 
for  the  ordinary  unlearned  man  to  test  politics 
and  the  worth  of  political  theory  by  the  realities 
of  his  daily  life  as  it  is  for  him  to  test  witchcraft — 
to  the  confusion  of  many  learned  doctors  and  the 
obliteration  of  fearful  and  wonderful  theories. 

That  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  even  if  en- 
lightened feeling  and  opinion  on  international 
relations  become  general,  serious  economic  ques- 
tions would  not  arise  between  States.  They 
would.  But  what  makes  those  differences  now 
so  fatal  is  precisely  this  general  feeling  that  the 
possession  of  political  power  over  others  is  an 
economic  need  of  life  and  death  order.  When  one 
State  of  the  Heptarchy  fought  with  another  over 
some  question  of  cattle  grazing,  or  fishing,  it  was 
a  war  from  "economic  causes,"  and  doubtless  the 
wise  men  of  the  time  spoke  of  the  inevitability  of 
the  struggle  for  subsistence  between  nations.  But 
there  was  no  inevitability  about  it.  That  it  did 
not  arise  from  any  real  sustenance  need  was 
proven  by  the  fact  that  both  states  sustained 
their  people  immeasurably  better  after  they  gave 
up  the  habit  of  fighting  one  another.  When  the 


254  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

inhabitants  of  Great  Britain  were  engaged  in  the 
"struggle  for  bread"  by  war  with  one  another, 
the  island  supported  with  difficulty,  and  frequent 
want  and  famine,  anything  from  half  a  million 
to  a  million  inhabitants.  When  they  stopped  this 
form  of  struggle  for  existence,  the  island  sup- 
ported in  infinitely  greater  comfort  a  population 
from  twenty  to  forty  times  as  great.  And  so 
little  is  it  true  that  the  great  states  of  the  world, 
like  America,  are  England's  "rivals"  to-day,  that 
a  sensible  proportion  of  the  British  people  is 
absolutely  dependent  upon  such  states  for  its 
livelihood:  let  all  these  "rivals"  be  destroyed 
and  those  people  would  have  to  starve  or  emi- 
grate.7 

Nor  has  the  use  of  political  power  for  the  con- 
trol of  trade  or  the  imposition  of  trade  monop- 
olies been,  as  a  matter  of  simple  historical  fact, 
any  permanent  element  of  a  people's  economic 
development,  or  any  real  "insurance  for  their 
future."  The  mercantilism  of  the  type  assumed 
by  Professor  Usher  to  be  the  motive  of  modern 
wars,  was  applied  ruthlessly  by  an  enormously 
powerful  Spain  with  a  hemisphere  for  experi- 
mental ground,  and  the  more  she  applied  it 
the  poorer  she  became.  Pretty  much  the  same 

TI  need  hardly  remind  the  reader  that  England  can  only 
raise  enough  food  for  some  four  fifths — or  less — of  her 
population. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  255 

could  be  said  of  Portugal,  and  of  France,  while 
England's  period  of  greatest  commercial  and 
industrial  development  synchronises  with  the 
abandonment  by  the  British  Empire  of  those 
methods.  Great  states,  wielding  immense  political 
power,  have  seen  the  welfare  of  their  peoples 
arrested  or  declining,  while  little  states,  with  no 
means  whatever  of  enforcing  their  supposed  in- 
terests by  military  means — the  Switzerlands, 
Denmarks,  Hollands,  Belgiums,  Swedens — have 
shown  a  steady  upward  movement,  and  to-day 
display  a  standard  of  wealth  and  welfare  not 
outdone  by  any  great  naval  or  military  state  of 
the  world. 

Not  that  we  need  assume  necessarily  that  there 
is  nothing  whatever  to  be  said  for  political  power 
as  a  means  of  economic  advantage.  There  was  a 
great  deal  to  be  said,  both  socially  and  morally, 
for  the  control  of  religious  belief  by  the  state, 
the  policy  which  gave  us  the  wars  of  religion. 
But  that  policy,  once  nearly  universal,  has  been 
abandoned,  not  because  every  argument  which 
led  to  it  has  been  answered,  but  because  the  funda- 
mental one  has.  That  argument  was  based  on 
the  belief  that  a  people's  possession  of  religious 
truth  was  dependent  upon  the  possession  of  pre- 
ponderant military  power  over  religious  "rivals." 
In  our  day  a  people's  prosperity  is  deemed  to  be 
dependent  upon  the  possession  of  preponderant 


256  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

military  and  political  power  over  economic 
"rivals."  When  it  is  realised  that  mere  political 
power,  preponderant  force  over  others,  is  in  any 
positive  sense  as  ineffective  to  the  ends  of  pro- 
moting prosperity  and  welfare  as  to  the  ends  of 
promoting  religious  truth,  we  shall  be  within  dis- 
tance of  making  wars  between  the  political  groups 
as  obsolete  as  are  wars  between  the  religious. 
And  just  as  these  realisations,  to  which  we  owe 
the  disappearance  of  the  religious  wars,  were 
the  result  of  a  change  of  mind  and  attitude  due 
to  widespread  discussion — largely  the  indirect 
work  of  the  Reformation — so,  by  the  dragging 
of  international  problems  into  the  arena  of  normal 
political  discussion,  by  the  growing  perception 
that  those  problems  are  an  integral  part  of  all 
social  problems,  we  may  get  a  corresponding 
change  of  mind  and  attitude  in  our  international 
relations.  And  then — and  probably  by  no  means 
which  does  not  include  this  process — will  the 
''inevitable"  conflicts  be  made  avoidable.8 

Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  has,  in  his  compelling 
way,  described  this  false  picture  of  the  state  to 
which  I  have  referred  as  "the  governmental 
theory."  He  says: 

War  is  made — this  war  has  been  made — not  by  any 
necessity  of  nature,  any  law  beyond  human  control,  any 

*From  a  Review  of  Prof.  Usher's  book,  "Pan-Americanism," 
in  The  New  Republic,  July  17,  1915. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  257 

fate  to  which  men  must  passively  bow;  it  is  made  be- 
cause certain  men  who  have  immediate  power  over  other 
men  are  possessed  by  a  certain  theory.  Sometimes  they 
are  fully  conscious  of  this  theory.  More  often,  perhaps, 
it  works  in  them  unconsciously.  But  it  is  there,  the 
dominating  influence  in  international  politics.  I  shall 
call  it  the  governmental  theory,  because  it  is  among 
governing  persons — emperors,  kings,  ministers,  and  their 
diplomatic  and  military  advisers — that  its  influence  is 
most  conspicuous  and  most  disastrous.  It  might  be  out- 
lined as  follows: 

The  world  is  divided,  politically,  into  States.  These 
States  are  a  kind  of  abstract  Beings,  distinct  from  the 
men,  women  and  children  who  inhabit  them.  They  are 
in  perpetual  and  inevitable  antagonism  to  one  another; 
and,  though  they  may  group  themselves  in  alliances,  they 
can  be  only  for  temporary  purposes  to  meet  some  other 
alliance  or  single  Power.  For  states  are  bound  by  a 
moral  or  physical  obligation  to  expand  indefinitely  each 
at  the  cost  of  the  others.  They  are  natural  enemies, 
they  always  have  been  so,  and  they  always  will  be;  and 
force  is  the  only  arbiter  between  them.  That  being  so, 
War  is  an  eternal  necessity.  As  a  necessity,  it  should  be 
accepted,  if  not  welcomed,  by  all  sound-thinking  and 
right-feeling  men.  Pacifists  are  men  at  once  weak  and 
dangerous.  They  deny  a  fact  as  fundamental  as  any  of 
the  facts  of  the  natural  world.  And  their  influence,  if 
they  have  any,  can  only  be  disastrous  to  their  State  in 
its  ceaseless  and  inevitable  contest  with  other  States.9 


'Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson,  so  well  known  in  America  from  his 
books,  is  a  lecturer  in  political  science  at  Cambridge  University, 
a  fact  interesting  in  this  connection  which  may  not  be  so  well 
known. 


258  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

The  relation  of  the  ordinary  man  to  this  theory 
he  thus  explains: 

He  has  a  blank  mind  open  to  suggestion;  and  he  has 
passions  and  instincts  which  it  is  easy  to  enlist  on  the 
side  of  the  governmental  theory.  He  has  been  busy  all 
his  life;  and  he  has  no  education,  or  one  that  is  worse 
than  none,  about  those  issues  which,  in  a  crisis  like  that 
which  has  come  upon  us,  suddenly  reveal  themselves  as 
the  issues  of  life  and  death.  History,  no  doubt,  should 
have  informed  him.  But  history,  for  the  most  part,  is 
written  without  intelligence  or  conviction.  It  is  mere 
narrative,  devoid  of  instruction,  and  seasoned,  if  at  all, 
by  some  trivial,  habitual,  and  second-hand  prejudice  of 
the  author.  History  has  never  been  understood,  though 
it  has  often  been  misunderstood.  To  understand  it  is 
perhaps  beyond  the  power  of  the  human  intellect.  But 
the  attempt  even  has  hardly  begun  to  be  made.  Deprived, 
then,  of  this  source  of  enlightenment,  the  ordinary  man 
falls  back  upon  the  Press.  But  the  Press  is  either  an 
agent  of  the  very  governments  it  should  exist  to  criticise 
(it  is  so  notoriously  and  admittedly  on  the  Continent, 
and,  to  an  extent  which  we  cannot  measure,  also  in  this 
country)  or,  it  is  (with  a  few  honourable  exceptions) 
an  instrument  to  make  money  for  certain  individuals  or 
syndicates.  But  the  easiest  way  to  make  money  by  the 
Press  is  to  appeal  to  the  most  facile  emotions  and  the 
most  superficial  ideas  of  the  reader.  And  these  can 
easily  be  made  to  respond  to  the  suggestion  that  this  or 
that  foreign  State  is  our  natural  and  inevitable  enemy. 
The  strong  instincts  of  pugnacity  and  self-approbation, 
the  nobler  sentiment  of  patriotism,  a  vague  and  unanalysed 
impression  of  the  course  of  history,  these  and  other 
factors  combine  to  produce  this  result.  And  the  irony  is 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  259 

that  they  may  be  directed  indifferently  against  any  State. 
A  hundred  years  ago  it  was  France;  sixty  years  ago  it 
was  Russia ;  thirty  years  ago  it  was  France  again ;  now 
it  is  Germany ;  presently,  if  governments  have  their  way, 
it  will  be  Russia  again.  The  Foreign  offices  and  the 
Press  do  with  nations  what  they  like.  And  they  will 
continue  to  do  so,  until  ordinary  people  acquire  right 
ideas  and  a  machinery  to  make  them  effective. 

Such,  then,  in  very  general  terms,  is  the  issue ; 
and  until  the  democracies  of  Europe  can  in  some 
way  "sense"  it  by  some  real  discussion,  and  in 
general  terms  pass  upon  it,  as  they  have  passed 
upon  graver  issues  of  the  past,  there  can  be  no 
solution  of  the  military  conflicts  of  European 
society. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  in  the  way  of  bringing 
about  that  discussion,  of  making  these  issues  part 
of  the  ordinary  issues  of  everyday  politics,  stand 
certain  very  curious  facts  in  human  nature  which 
have  to  be  surmounted.  The  average  man  does 
not  like  to  have  to  change  his  opinion  upon  any 
matter  in  which  his  feeling  is  involved,  and  is 
very  angry  with  any  other  who  seems  to  be 
likely  to  do  it.  Generally  he  protects  himself 
against  such  risks  by  so  arranging  his  life — the 
clubs  or  societies  to  which  he  belongs,  the  papers 
that  he  reads,  the  people  that  he  meets — that  he 
only  comes  into  contact  with  ideas  that  he  already 
holds.  If  we  really  cared  about  the  truth,  we 


2<5o  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

should,  of  course,  arrange  our  clubs,  etc.,  so  as  to 
throw  Republicans  into  contact  with  Democrats, 
Catholics  with  Protestants.  As  it  is,  we  organise 
them  for  the  express  purpose  of  keeping  them 
apart. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  in  psychology,  this.  In  an 
argument  someone  shows  us  conclusively  that  we 
are  quite  wrong;  and  we  want  to  hit  him.  Yet 
he  has  done  us  a  very  great  service — one  of  the 
greatest  services  that  a  friend  can  do  us:  he  has 
corrected  an  error  of  which  we  were  the  victim. 
And  we  immediately  get  angry  with  him,  and  if 
it  is  safe  to  do  so,  call  him  names ;  and  if  the  public 
hear  evil  stories  about  men  of  unpopular  opinion 
— that  is  to  say,  men  who,  by  compelling  the  popu- 
lar opinion  to  justify  itself,  are  doing  the  com- 
munity a  very  great  deal  of  good — they  are 
delighted.  To  recall  the  outstanding  facts  in  the 
history  of  religious  heresy,  political  radicalism, 
abolition,  socialism,  suffrage  (until  these  things 
become  fashionable),  will  furnish  endless  exam- 
ples of  what  I  am  trying  to  indicate. 

Society  also  protects  itself  against  having  to 
shift  its  point  of  view  or  modify  a  conception,  by 
a  subconscious  conspiracy  to  kill  the  thing  at  the 
start  by  misrepresentation.  The  Roman  belief 
that  the  early  Christians  indulged  in  human  sacri- 
fice was  doubtless  genuine  in  its  way  as  was  the 
belief  of  the  English  churchman,  that  the  early 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  261 

dissenters  indulged  in  wild  orgies  of  devil 
worship. 

This  may  in  part  explain  the  popular  attitude 
towards  those  who  would  rationalise  and  improve 
the  relations  between  nations.  "Pacifist"  has  in 
the  popular  journalism  of  Europe  and  America 
become  a  term  of  contempt,  and  with  certain 
fluctuations  has  been  ever  since  the  idea  of 
international  organisation  and  order  took  root 
among  European  thinkers.  The  popular  feel- 
ing towards  the  "peace  men"  drove  Cobden 
from  public  life  at  the  time  of  the  Crimean 
War.  One  of  the  greatest  of  England's  orators, 
and,  in  his  generation,  one  of  its  great  democratic 
figures,  he  could  not  hold  a  meeting  in  his  own 
constituency  among  his  own  people.  Such  was 
the  penalty  of  venturing  to  differ  from  popular 
opinion  on  the  most  foolish  war  that  England 
ever  entered  into,  a  war  which  has  amply  justi- 
fied Cobden;  concerning  which,  as  Morley  has 
said,  all  the  after  events  showed  Cobden  to  be 
as  right  as  the  public  were  wrong. 

There  are  one  or  two  curious  forms  that  this 
subconscious  conspiracy  of  misrepresentation 
takes.  To  the  popular  journalist  the  Pacifist  is 
a  person  who  believes  that  war  is  impossible,  or 
that  it  will  not  take  place  because  foreigners  are 
too  kind  to  wage  it,  or  something  equivalent. 
And  every  war  that  breaks  out  is  taken  as 


262  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

demonstrating  how  foolish  Pacifists  are.  Yet 
surely  it  must  be  obvious,  even  to  the  hurried 
journalist,  that  no  man  in  his  senses  would,  in 
a  world  where  war  rages  every  year,  seriously 
urge  "the  impossibility  of  war."  And  the  Cob- 
dens  and  Herbert  Spencers,  after  all,  did  not 
write  from  lunatic  asylums.10 

10To  a  New  York  paper  which  had  editorially  remarked 
that  "Mr.  Norman  Angell  has  written  books  in  the  endeavour  to 
prove  that  war  has  been  made  impossible  by  modern  economic 
conditions  .  .  .  but  events  have  shown  their  fallacy,"  I  was 
impelled  to  reply  as  follows : 

I  have  never  written  any  book  to  prove  that  war  has  been 
made  impossible.  On  the  contrary,  in  every  book  of  mine  on 
the  subject,  I  have  urged,  perhaps  with  wearisome  emphasis, 
that  no  such  conclusion  could  be  drawn  from  the  facts 
with  which  I  dealt.  Indeed,  considering  that  violent  wars  were 
raging  when  the  books  were  written ;  have  been  raging  very 
nearly  continuously  ever  since,  such  books,  had  they  been  based 
on  the  argument  that  "wars  had  become  impossible,"  must  quite 
obviously  have  been  just  silly  rubbish,  and  I  do  not  quite  see,  in 
that  case,  how  you  would  justify  your  very  excellent  reviews 
of  them ! 

What,  of  course,  I  have  tried  to  show  is  not  that  war  is  impos- 
sible, but  that  it  is  futile;  not  that  conquest  cannot  in  modern 
economic  conditions  take  place,  but  that  those  conditions  make  it 
impossible  to  benefit  by  it ;  that  the  victory  of  Germany,  for 
instance  (if  that  implied  conquest),  would  not  benefit  the  German 
people  morally  or  materially,  and  that  all  the  talk  about  the  need 
for  Germany's  fighting  for  her  place  in  the  sun,  or  her  political 
"expansion"  being  necessitated  by  the  struggle  of  her  population 
for  sustenance,  is  all  part  of  a  grave  and  very  prevalent  miscon- 
ception. I  have,  indeed,  taken  the  ground  that  since  the  Reli- 
gious Wars,  most  wars  have  been  the  outcome  of  a  contest  for 
political  power  based  on  just  that  false  conception.  Among  the 
causes  of  this  war  the  general  belief  in  Germany  that  that  coun- 
try had  to  possess  greater  power  than  its  neighbors  or  be 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  263 

Another  form  of  protective  misrepresentation, 
by  which  the  community  is  shielded  from  any  dis- 
turbing need  to  readjust  its  opinion  in  this  matter, 
is  a  sort  of  swinging  between  picturing  the  Pacifist 
as  a  dreamy,  idealistic  person  living  in  an  unreal, 
Sunday-school  kind  of  world,  and  altogether  too 


gradually  "squeezed  out,"  both  in  the  sense  of  economic  expan- 
sion and  national  culture,  certainly  played  a  large,  if  not  a 
dominant  part. 

Since  no  nation  will  commit  suicide,  even  on  behalf  of 
morality  and  peace,  the  question  whether  these  conceptions  are 
right  or  wrong,  whether  nations  are  in  reality  struggling  units 
obliged  in  a  world  of  limited  space  and  opportunity  to  eat  or  be 
eaten,  is  the  supreme  question  behind  all  international  politics. 
All  relations  of  one  country  to  another  turn  at  last  upon  that 
ultimate  interrogation. 

I  have  tried  to  contribute  certain  quite  definite  data,  economic, 
social,  and  moral,  toward  the  answer  of  it;  to  show  that  that 
data  proved  aggression  and  territorial  conquest  (the  possibility 
of  which  creates  the  need  for  defensive  armament),  to  be  futile 
in  terms  of  human  well-being.  The  events  of  this  war  do  not 
show,  if  I  may  say  so,  "the  fallacy  of  these  arguments,"  or 
anything  resembling  it. 

But  the  futility  of  war  will  never  of  itself  stop  war,  and  it 
is  that  fact  which  justifies  the  very  ungrateful  task  in  which  I 
happen  to  be  engaged.  It  is  not  enough  that  conquest  and  power 
should  be  barren;  men  must  realise  that  barrenness,  since,  even 
in  their  rational  moments,  they  are  not  guided  necessarily  by 
their  interests,  but  what  they  believe  to  be  their  interests.  It  is 
not  the  facts  which  matter  so  much  as  men's  opinions  about  the 
facts.  And,  unhappily,  mankind  is  little  apt  to  be  guided  by 
reason  at  all,  and  that  is  why  it  is  so  tragically  important  to 
nurse  and  cultivate  the  little  reason  that  we  have  and  to  get 
the  facts  of  this  matter  as  clear  as  possible.  Otherwise,  certain 
luxuries  of  our  nature — temper,  pride,  passion,  irritation — will 
certainly  lead  us  to  the  pit, 


264  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

good  for  this,  refusing  to  face  the  hard  facts  of 
life — between  this,  and  the  exact  opposite  of  a 
sordid  person  who  thinks  that  nations  go  to  war 
for  money  and  would  yield  up  his  country's 
honour  for  profit  or  security.  (The  two  pictures 
can  be,  and  are,  used  indifferently  for  one  and 
the  same  person.) 

This  last  plea  has  been  used  particularly  with 
reference  to  that  case  against  the  prevailing 
view  which  I  have  attempted  to  indicate  in  this 
chapter.  Even  Mahan  was  shocked — quite 
genuinely,  I  believe — at  the  "sordidness"  of  the 
thesis  which  I  presented.  That  this  should  be 
possible  with  a  man  of  Mahan's  intellectual  equip- 
ment shows  the  difficulties  that  stand  in  the  way 
of  any  real  discussion  of  this  issue. 

Just  consider.  Mahan  had  laid  it  down  that  to 
the  possession  of  political  power  based  on  arms 
there  belonged  commercial  advantages  so  great 
that  inevitably,  as  the  world  grew  more  crowded, 
men,  for  their  very  sustenance,  must  be  pushed 
into  war.  For  many  years  Mahan  maintained 
this,  fortifying  it  by  the  general  proposition  that 
states  must  unsentimentally,  because  they  are 
trustees  for  their  people,  be  guided  by  their  in- 
terests even  to  the  extent  of  killing  others  in 
defence  of  them.  He  regarded  this  killing  as  an 
inevitable  and  even  elevating  process.  He  main- 
tained all  this  for  many  years,  and  I  am  not 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  265 

aware  that  any  critic  ever  thought  of  treating  him 
as  sordid  therefor.11 

A  writer  then  comes  along  and  attempts  to 
show  that  there  is  not  this  dreadful  alternative 
between  killing  other  people's  children  or  allow- 
ing our  own  to  starve ;  that  these  conflicts  are  not 
any  necessary  result  of  physical  facts  in  nature, 
but  are  the  results  of  a  misunderstanding  con- 
cerning them  which  it  is  necessary  to  clear  up. 
Obviously  that  misunderstanding  cannot  be 
cleared  up  save  by  showing  where  and  in  what 
manner  the  prevailing  interpretation  of  the  facts 


"Mahan's  attitude  in  this  matter  showed  how  possible  it  is  for 
a  great  technician,  for  a  man  who  has  handled  what  may  be 
called  the  mechanism  of  power  all  his  life,  never  to  have  asked 
himself  clearly  the  fundamental  question :  "What  in  the  end  is 
it  all  for?"  This  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  he  could  give  with 
equal  emphasis  two  mutually  contradictory  answers  to  it  accord- 
ing to  the  mood  or  controversial  necessity  of  the  moment.  In 
1908  (in  "The  Interest  of  America  in  International  Conditions") 
he  wrote :  "It  is  as  true  now  as  when  Washington  penned  the 
words,  and  will  always  be  true,  that  it  is  vain  to  expect  nations 
to  act  consistently  from  any  motive  other  than  that  of  interest. 
.  .  .  The  study  of  interests — international  interests — is  the  basis 
of  sound,  of  provident  policy  for  statesmen."  Yet,  in  criti- 
cism of  my  own  work,  which  sought  to  establish  just  what 
were  the  real  interests  of  nations  in  the  matter  of  conquest,  he 
wrote  (North  American  Review,  March,  1912)  :  "Nations  are 
under  no  illusion  as  to  the  unprofitableness  of  war.  .  .  .  The 
entire  conception  of  the  work  is  itself  an  illusion  based  upon  a 
profound  misreading  of  human  action.  To  regard  the  world 
as  governed  by  self-interest  only  is  to  live  in  a  non-existent 
world,  a  world  possessed  by  an  idea  much  less  worthy  than 
those  which  mankind,  to  do  it  bare  justice,  persistently  entertains." 


266  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

in  question  is  wrong.  The  facts  are,  of  course, 
"economic"  in  their  nature,  and  that  has  involved 
dealing  with  certain  economic  phenomena  and 
their  relation  to  international  politics. 

Then  Mahan  replies  that  this  writer  is  a  very 
sordid  person  for  introducing  such  a  thing  as 
"economics"  into  the  problems  of  war  and  peace. 
An  English  military  critic  says  that  the  -attempt 
to  do  so  is  a  "slander  upon  the  profession  of  arms 
and  offensive  to  men  of  honourable  tradition." 

Let  us  see  the  position  in  which  this  places 
these  military  critics  with  reference  to  (say) 
German  policy  and  its  results. 

The  German  is  presumed  to  have  based  his 
aggression,  in  part  at  least,  upon  this  kind  of 
plea :  The  great  expansion  of  our  population  com- 
pels us  to  acquire  territory  wherewith  to  feed 
them.  Failing  that,  our  children  will  be  reduced 
to  want. 

To  this  the  military  philosopher  in  England 
or  in  America  replies  in  effect:  "You  are  abso- 
lutely right.  That  is  just  the  position  in  which 
you  are  placed." 

And  one  can  imagine  the  German  then  saying 
to  the  Englishman  or  American:  "In  that  case 
you  will,  of  course,  as  a  man  of  chivalric  tradi- 
tion, share  with  us  your  great  heritage;  or,  at 
least,  facilitate  our  expansion.  You  will  not  op- 
pose it  by  your  arms." 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  267 

To  which  the  British  Imperialist,  or  Nationalist, 
or  Militarist,  or  whatever  one  cares  to  call  him, 
replies:  "We  are  a  people  of  noble  and  chivalrous 
tradition.  You  shall  therefore  starve  ere  we 
want,  and  we  will  kill  your  people  upon  the  battle- 
field to  the  last  man  rather  than  give  from  our 
fullness  to  your  need." 

•And  then  comes  the  Pacifist  to  say :  "You  have 
stated  a  false  dilemma.  No  sacrifice  on  your 
part  is  involved.  The  German  can  feed  his  chil- 
dren and  add  to  your  wealth  in  so  doing.  He 
can  better  their  welfare,  and  you  can  profit.  You 
need  not  surrender  anything  whatsoever.  It  is 
merely  a  matter  of  understanding  how." 

To  which  the  militarist  replies:  "You  are  a 
sordid  bagman  and  understand  nothing  of  the 
noble  sentiments  that  animate  my  soul." 

Now,  if  all  this  began  and  ended  as  a  matter 
of  dialectics  between  rival  "schools  of  thought,"  it 
would  be  of  no  great  moment,  and  the  reader  may, 
indeed,  ask  what  all  this  has  to  do  with  the  "ulti- 
mate problem  of  power."  Well,  these  issues  lie 
at  the  very  bottom  of  that  problem.  Mankind  is 
fighting  blindly;  it  has  not  really  asked  itself  why 
its  conflicts  arise.  It  is  concerned  with  a  mass 
of  confusions  and  misunderstandings  which 
themselves  generate  the  poison  gas  of  ill-feeling 
that  prevents  us  seeing  clearly;  it  is  in  the  worst 
kind  of  vicious  circle,  and  we  are  trying  to  break 


268  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

it  at  one  point — the  point  where  the  very  attempt 
to  open  blinded  eyes  creates  the  hostility  of  the 
sufferers  to  the  remedy. 

I  am  not,  of  course,  overlooking  the  fact  that 
the  feeling  against  Pacificism  is  "protective"  in 
a  more  rational  sense:  based  upon  the  fear  that 
such  indoctrination  may  lead  to  a  neglect  of 
national  defence  and  so  endanger  the  country's 
security. 

But  in  so  far  as  the  advocacy  of  military  pre- 
paredness includes  appeals  to  old  prejudices  and 
misconceptions,  and  the  disparagement  of  effort 
at  international  agreement — and  we  have  to 
admit  unfortunately  that  very  much  of  such 
advocacy  does  include  that — it  is  likely  to  create 
as  much  danger  as  it  provides  against. 

Much  military  advocacy  in  America  would 
seem  to  imply  that  military  force  need  not  take 
foreign  policy  or  the  questions  raised  at  the  be- 
ginning of  this  chapter  into  consideration  at  all, 
because  the  United  States  could  never  be  brought 
into  military  conflict  with  a  foreign  nation  except 
to  repel  an  unprovoked  invasion  of  these  shores. 
The  average  advocate  of  increased  armament 
seems  to  say:  "All  we  ask  of  foreign  nations  is, 
kindly  to  keep  out.  And  as  we  don't  intend  to 
argue  about  that,  what  has  the  nature  of  our 
foreign  policy  to  do  with  the  amount  of  protec- 
tion that  we  need?" 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  269 

Well,  a  moment's  reflection  suffices  to  show 
what  a  travesty  of  the  facts  that  is,  and  how  very 
direct  is  the  relation  between  our  military  needs 
and  our  foreign  policy. 

Within  the  last  few  years  the  United  States 
has  been  confronted  with  the  problem  of  a  pos- 
sible intervention  in  Mexico ;  it  has  actually  inter- 
vened in  Central  America;  is  at  this  moment 
arranging  the  affairs  of  Hayti ;  has  been  develop- 
ing a  specific  policy  toward  South  America  which 
makes  this  country,  by  that  fact,  concerned  very 
closely  with  the  relations  of  European  nations  to 
those  republics,  and  this,  apart  from  the  implica- 
tions and  responsibilities  under  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine, whatever  they  may  be ;  has  taken  over  the 
government  of  islands  off  the  coast  of  Asia;  has 
been  brought  into  conflict  with  England  over  the 
Panama  Canal ;  with  Japan  over  the  question  of 
immigration;  has  taken  a  certain  stand  with 
reference  to  the  Open  Door  in  China,  and  may  be 
brought  into  conflict  with  Japan  also  over  the 
future  international  status  of  China;  has  been 
brought  into  very  acute  conflict  with  Germany 
over  sea  law,  and  less  acute  but  still  serious  con- 
flict with  England  over  other  phases  of  the  same 
law. 

Now  it  is  out  of  some  of  these  questions  that 
war,  if  it  .comes  to  America,  will  arise:  some  de- 
mand of  Japan  for  equality  of  treatment  which 


270  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  nature  of  its  Federal  relations  with  California 
will  not  allow  the  government  to  grant;  a  con- 
sequent attack  on  the  Philippines  which  this  coun- 
try would  repel — the  beginning  it  may  be  of  some 
great  assertion  of  their  power  by  Asiatic 
peoples — a  long,  demoralising  and  enervating 
war. 

It  is  unlikely  to  be  fought  on  American  soil  and 
military  preparedness  of  itself  will  not  prevent  it. 
Merely  to  acquire  an  army  or  a  navy  sufficiently 
large  to  deal  with  Japan  would  certainly  not  be 
adequate,  even  from  a  purely  military  point  of 
view.  The  great  wars  of  our  time  are  not  fought 
by  single  nations  but  by  groups,  and  Japan  would 
certainly  find  Asiatic  and  possibly  European 
allies. 

These  questions  present  themselves:  Are  we 
going  to  make  no  attempt  to  stop  this  drift  to- 
wards conflict  by  some  equitable  settlement  of  the 
difficulties  involved  ?  To  take  one  instance  only : 
that  of  Japan.  Those  who  know  the  subject  best 
declare  that  settlement  is  not  impossible  and  thai- 
patience  and  fairness  on  America's  part  could 
secure  it.  But  that  means  an  effort  which  won't 
be  military  at  all.  Are  we  going  to  make  that 
effort? 

Probably  it  cannot  succeed  except  as  part  of 
the  settlement  of  other  foreign  difficulties:  those 
with  China,  possibly  with  certain  of  the  South 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  271 

American  republics.  And  if  we  find  that  it  cannot 
be  settled,  are  we  going  to  wage  this  war  alone, 
without  knowing  beforehand  what  stand  the  other 
white  nations — Australia,  Canada,  and  Great 
Britain — will  take  with  reference  to  this  ques- 
tion of  the  relations  of  Asiatic  and  European? 

But  so  long  as  "preparedness"  means  merely 
adding  to  the  instruments  of  war,  America  may 
muddle  into  this  great  collision  without  having 
made  just  the  kind  of  effort  that  might  have 
avoided  it.  And  her  responsibility  in  that  case 
will  be  a  very  serious  one. 

International  relations  become  daily  less  and 
less  matters  merely  of  two  parties,  more  and  more 
matters  of  many.  American  relations  to  China 
affect  immediately  those  to  Japan;  those  to  Japan 
affect  those  to  Great  Britain,  those  to  Mexico  to 
the  whole  problem  of  Pan- Americanism ;  the 
policy  of  Pan- Americanism  to  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine; the  Monroe  Doctrine  the  whole  relation- 
ship of  the  new  to  the  old  world. 

Where  does  America  stand  precisely  in  all  this  ? 
Nobody  very  clearly  knows.  And  until  it  is  known 
we  cannot  tell  whether  we  or  the  others  are  the 
aggressors,  and,  however  great  our  navy  and 
army  may  be,  whether  we  are  adequately  de- 
fended or  not.  For  in  the  last  resort  the  army 
and  navy  are  for  the  purpose  of  defending,  not  a 
country,  but  the  policy  of  a  country. 


272  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Every  war,  moreover,  has  a  Pacifist  aim:  it  is 
fought  to  establish  a  peace.  (After  all,  peace  is 
just  as  inevitable  as  war,  which  cannot  last  for 
ever. )  What  kind  of  peace  ?  Without  some  con- 
ception of  that,  without  some  kind  of  programme, 
war  degenerates  into  a  series  of  national  epileptic 
fits.  A  sudden  passion  on  both  sides,  over  a 
question  that  neither  has  rationally  discussed, 
precipitates  an  American-Japanese  War.  The 
Japanese  are  beaten,  but  the  victory  does  not  settle 
the  question;  the  Japanese  may  decide  that  in 
some  early  future,  with  a  westernised  China  at 
their  back,  they  won't  be  beaten.  And  so  it  might 
go  on  until  a  policy  of  some  kind  is  established. 
On  the  morrow  of  most  wars  the  discovery  is 
made  that  if  the  nations  had  taken  as  much 
trouble  with  policy  before  the  war  began  as  they 
are  obliged  to  take  when  it  is  over,  it  need  never 
have  taken  place  at  all.  Scientific  Pacifism  is 
merely  the  formulation  of  that  policy. 

Not  that  saner  international  relations  are  a 
simple  matter;  they  are  not.  And  it  is  because 
they  are  difficult  and  increasingly  important  that 
one  must  take  a  little  trouble  with  them. 

*     * 

One  of  the  most  difficult  problems  of  inter- 
national politics  is  the  psychology  of  national 
defence.  Earlier  in  this  chapter  I  attempted  to 
show  that  it  is  not  enough  that  nations  should  in 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  273 

fact  have  no  need  to  fight  one  another ;  that  war, 
in  other  words,  is  futile.  It  is  also  necessary  that 
they  realise  it  to  be  futile.  Otherwise  it  will  still 
go  on.  But  even  that  is  not  enough.  Each  side 
must  see  that  the  other  realises  its  futility. 
For  even  though  each  of  two  parties  may  him- 
self believe  that  nothing  is  to  be  gained  by 
war,  if  he  thinks  that  the  other  party  may  be 
of  a  different  opinion,  you  may  still  get  war  from 
mutual  fear ;  which  is  probably  what  in  large  part 
this  present  war  is.  Each  being  afraid  of  the 
other  takes  measures  to  which  the  other  immedi- 
ately replies,  and  finally  it  becomes  necessary  to 
act  first  in  order  to  anticipate  the  other.  That 
was  the  case  perhaps  in  the  European  war. 
Everybody  was  afraid  of  everybody  else.  At  the 
last  it  was  precipitated  by  the  very  things  which 
each  did  to  make  himself  safe.  Germany  built  a 
navy  to  be  on  the  safe  side;  it  brought  England 
into  the  war  against  Germany ;  France  allied  her- 
self with  Russia  to  be  safe;  but  for  the  alliance 
she  would  not  have  been  involved.  Russia  mobi- 
lised to  protect  herself  against  German  action: 
it  led  Germany  to  declare  war.  And  so  on. 

Not  merely  were  we  all  afraid,  but  we  were 
all  afraid  of  an  action  from  the  other  side  which 
was  finally  caused  by  our  own. 

I  know  it  is  difficult  at  this  stage  to  realise  that 
the  Germans  could  have  been  afraid  of  the  Rus- 


274  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

sians,  and  perhaps  the  general  staff  wasn't.  But 
the  people  as  a  whole — including  the  Social 
Democrat  party — were.  I  remember  a  conversa- 
tion which  I  had  in  Germany  with  a  business  man 
who  knew  Europe  pretty  well  and  I  think  it  is 
worth  reproduction  here. 

I  had  been  defending  English  "nervousness" 
with  reference  to  invasion;  had  urged  our  vul- 
nerability, or  what  we  thought  to  be  our  vulner- 
ability; that  we  had  never  abused  our  world- 
power;  that  Germany  was  not  so  vulnerable  and 
had  little  to  fear,  and  perhaps — I  hinted — had 
not  always  refrained  from  abusing  her  power  in 
the  past.  The  German  had  listened  patiently,  and 
when  I  had  quite  done  he  spoke  with  a  certain 
quiet  intensity.  And  this  is  what  he  said: 

"Oh,  yes.  You  talked  just  now  of  the 
'stately  homes  of  England.'  Do  you  know 
that  there  are  no  stately  homes  of  Germany 
— no  beautiful  old  houses  that  have  come 
down  to  us  from  the  past.  They  have  all, 
practically  every  one,  been  destroyed  by  the 
invader,  mainly  by  the  French,  by  the  Rus- 
sian, or  his  hirelings  and  allies.  I  suppose 
you  know  the  history  of  the  Thirty  Years' 
War,  of  the  wars  of  Louis  XIV,  of  the  wars 
of  Napoleon — how  these  new-found  friends 
of  yours  ravaged  our  country  again  and 
again,  and  actually,  literally,  cut  our  popu- 
lation in  half ;  stamped  it  into  the  mud.  Try 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  275 

to  get  the  perspective.  Picture  Edinburgh, 
Glasgow,  Newcastle,  Liverpool,  Manchester, 
Leeds,  Sheffield,  Birmingham,  and  Notting- 
ham wiped  out,  not  merely  that  the  houses 
were  destroyed,  but  that  every  man  and 
woman  and  child  within  those  places  had 
perished,  and  this  not  in  some  distant  past, 
but  so  near  to  you  that  your  great-grand- 
father could  have  told  you  the  story,  having 
got  it  from  the  mouths  of  those  who  wit- 
nessed it. 

"Of  course,  you  cannot  conceive,  no  man 
can  conceive,  what  the  destruction  of  ten 
million  human  beings  means.  Yet  by  that 
number  of  beings  was  the  population  of 
Germany  decreased  during  these  wars.  A 
State  as  populous  as  England  when  Queen 
Victoria  came  to  the  throne  was  in  one  war 
reduced  to  the  population  of  Holland.  What 
have  you  to  compare  with  this,  to  set  beside 
it?  When,  indeed,  have  you  had  to  watch 
vast  uncounted  multitudes  of  your  women 
and  children  driven  forth  homeless,  their 
corpses  massed  in  the  country  roads,  with 
grass  in  their  mouths,  the  only  food  that  the 
invader  had  left?  And  these  same  invaders 
who  have  poured  in  devastating  floods  over 
our  land  to-day  boast  that  again  they  will 
invade  us  if  and  when  they  can.  I  say  boast. 
Can  you  find  me  one  French  public  man  who 
will  say  that  France  should  abandon  the  hope 
of  attacking  us?  It  is  their  declared,  their 
overt  policy. 

"And  that  is  only  half  the  story,  the  danger 


276  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

on  one  side  of  us  only.  On  our  other  side  we 
have  160,000,000  of  semi-barbaric  people  of 
whom  not  more  than  one-eighth  can  read  or 
write.  The  Chinese  have  a  larger  proportion 
of  literates  than  these  Russians.  And  these, 
our  immediate  neighbours,  are  governed  on 
absolutist  methods  by  a  reactionary  bureau- 
cracy frankly  militarist.  It  is  a  country  in 
which  public  interest  means  the  interest  of 
an  autocratic  caste.  Do  you  believe  that 
such  a  State,  whose  frontier  abuts  directly 
on  ours,  is  no  danger?  But,  my  dear  Eng- 
lishman, for  generations,  until  last  Tuesday 
week  in  fact,  you  were  preaching  that  this 
Great  Power  was  the  standing  menace  of  the 
Western  World,  and  although  a  Russian 
soldier  has  never  set  foot  upon  your  shores 
you  have  fought  one  great  war  to  stop  the 
progress  of  this  nation,  to  check  her  march 
towards  your  possessions.  But  it  is  not  in  a 
distant  possession  that  she  threatens  us.  It 
is  on  our  own  soil. 

"So  that  is  our  situation :  on  our  right  and 
on  our  left  enemies  from  whom  we  have 
suffered  as  no  other  civilised  people  have 
suffered  at  the  hands  of  enemies.  The  his- 
tory of  both  is  a  history  of  conquest,  in  one 
case  passionate,  insatiable  conquest,  whose 
ambitions  you  and  I  in  the  past  have  had  to 
resist  shoulder  to  shoulder.  And  that  Power, 
who  was  your  enemy  for  centuries,  makes  no 
secret  of  its  intention  to  renew  the  aggression 
upon  us  when  it  can.  It  is  in  the  creed  and 
blood  of  Frenchmen  that  they  will  attack  us 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  277 

at  the  first  opportunity.  Oh,  yes,  we  are  a 
military  people.  Do  you  wonder?  But  we 
have  fought  on  our  own  soil,  or  have  re- 
turned to  it  as  soon  as  the  invader  was  re- 
pulsed. And  you?  You  have  fought  in 
every  land  under  the  sun  except  your  own. 
And  where  you  have  fought  you  have  for  the 
most  part  stayed.  Where  have  we  sought 
to  conquer?  Where  have  we  stayed,  save 
in  territories  that  were  in  history,  race, 
and  language  part  of  the  German  heritage? 
Our  soldiers  have  fought  your  battles  in 
North  America.  Where  is  our  North  Amer- 
ican dominion  ?  We  helped  you  to  break  the 
power  of  Napoleon.  Have  we  inherited 
French  Colonies?  We  helped  you  to  fight 
your  battles  in  Spain.  A  regiment  of  ours 
still  bears  upon  its  arms  the  word  'Gibraltar.' 
You  have  the  fortress.  We  have  the  name. 
"This  is  ancient  history.  But  what  is  our 
modern  history?  With  these  memories  be- 
hind us  we  found  ourselves  the  absolute  mas- 
ters of  our  ancient  military  enemy,  France. 
The  country  from  whom  during  bloody  cen- 
turies our  people  had  suffered  so  much  was 
at  our  feet,  thanks  not  so  much  to  our 
strength  as  to  her  divisions.  We  found  her 
people  murdering  each  other,  divided  against 
themselves,  helpless,  broken,  hopeless.  What 
did  we  do?  Did  we  adopt  the  policy  of  Louis 
XIV  or  Napoleon,  the  policy  that  Louis 
Napoleon  would  have  adopted  if  he  had  been 
the  victor?  We  conquered  nothing.  We 
restored  to  Germany  what  was  German  in 


278  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

speech  and  history  and  had  been  cut  off  by 
the  sword  from  the  German  body  two  cen- 
turies before.  And  even  when,  during  the 
generation  that  followed,  when  perhaps  we 
were  the  military  masters  of  Europe,  did  we 
start  upon  a  career  of  conquest?  We  are 
the  only  Great  Power  that  has  not  gone  to 
war,  real  war,  for  forty  years.  And  in  those 
forty  years  you  have  fought  wars  big  and 
little.  Your  conquests  have  gone  on.  You 
have  acquired  Upper  Burma,  British  Balu- 
chistan, part  of  the  Straits  Settlements, 
Rhodesia,  Nigeria,  Uganda,  Nyassaland, 
British  East  Africa,  the  Transvaal,  the 
Orange  River  Colony,  Egypt.  And  France, 
she  has  acquired  a  whole  Empire — Cochin 
China,  Cambodia,  Annam,  Tonkin,  Mada- 
gascar, Tunis,  Senegambia,  Dahomey,  and 
finally  Morocco.  What  has  Germany  to  com- 
pare to  all  this  ? 

"And  now  you  profess  to  know,  by  what 
political  astrology  I  cannot  tell,  that  we  are 
to  be  the  aggressor — we  who  under  the 
shelter  of  our  national  armour  have  scru- 
pulously kept  our  sword  sheathed  and  have 
found  our  expansion  in  the  arts  of  peace,  we 
who  have  endeavoured  to  give  to  Europe  an 
example  of  social  organisation  complete  and 
scientific,  who  by  our  industrial  organisation 
have  stopped  the  emigration  of  our  people, 
who  possess  a  territory  as  yet  half  filled,  are 
told  by  you,  who  have  conquered  half  a 
world,  that  these  old  enemies  of  ours,  who  in 
the  past  have  invaded  us  again  and  again, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  279 

and  who  still  boast  that  they  will  do  it 
yet  once  more  if  they  can,  must  be  strength- 
ened by  English  might,  lest  we  should  crush 
them ! 

"What  can  we  conclude  ?  Here  is  my  old 
enemy  Jacques  shaking  his  fist  and  declaring 
that  he  will  go  for  me  because  he  is  deter- 
mined to  have  certain  property  that  I  hold, 
and  then  you  rise  and  announce  that  you  will 
stand  by  Jacques.  He  has  only  been  waiting 
for  the  means  to  attack  me,  and  now  finds 
these  means — yours — placed  at  his  disposal. 
What  can  I  possibly  conclude  but  that  you 
desire  to  instigate  him  to  attack  me?  What 
is  all  this  talk  of  the  'new  France,'  of  which 
we  hear,  but  the  revival  of  old  France,  of 
all  that  Napoleon  meant,  'The  Great  Shadow' 
as  one  of  your  own  writers  has  called  him? 
It  is  you  who  have  revived  the  spectre  of 
the  guerre  de  revanche,  which  was  nearly 
laid  a  year  or  two  ago,  and  would  have  dis- 
appeared but  for  your  encouragement.  The 
successors  of  the  Napoleons  are  now  talking, 
as  you  are  now  talking,  of  this  expeditionary 
force  to  the  Continent.  But  an  English  ex- 
peditionary force  to  the  Continent  means  a 
force  against  Germany.  Against  whom  else 
could  you  use  it?  And  so,  with  these 
160,000,000  barbarians  on  our  right,  and  our 
ancient  military  enemy  (who  also  talks  of 
using  the  black  troops  of  his  African  Empire 
against  us)  on  our  left — both  peoples  who 
have  invaded  us  and  destroyed  our  homes — 
you  are  now  to  add  an  invasion  from  another 


28o  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

quarter.  What  do  you  expect  us  to  do? 
Stand  and  wait  supinely  for  it  to  come  to  us ; 
watch  the  hordes  of  invaders,  the  old  in- 
vaders and  the  new  prospective  ones, 
increase  ? 

"My  friend,  the  reply  to  an  English  ex- 
peditionary force  is  a  German  Navy.  We 
must  try  to  prevent  that  force  reaching  our 
shores  or  the  shores  of  our  enemy,  your  ally. 
That  is  why  we  build. 

"You  talk  of  standing  by  an  'old  friend.' 
By  an  'old  friend'  you  mean  not  the  one  who 
has  maintained  peace  with  you  for  1,000 
years  and  who  has  fought  your  battles  with 
you,  but  the  one  who  has  fought  against 
you  for  a  thousand  years  and  whom  ten  years 
ago  your  own  statesman  warned  to  mend 
their  manners  or  take  the  consequences.  And 
that  same  statesman  was  talking  then  of  an 
alliance  with  Germany.  And  when  we  see 
this  sudden  patching  up  of  the  old  enmity, 
are  we  not  entitled  to  watch  and  see  its  mean- 
ing, and  begin  soberly  and  moderately  to 
take  our  precautions?  I  know  no  official 
secrets,  but  it  seems  that  you  needed  French 
acquiescence,  in  Egypt  was  it  not?  What 
was  the  price?  That  you  should  support 
France  somewhere  else  against  us  apparently 
if  needs  be.  Well,  we  hoped  that  Morocco 
had  paid  off  your  obligations,  but  now  appar- 
ently you  are  still  to  support  France  against 
us  in  all  her  quarrels.  And  thus  'the  new 
France.'  Once  more  we  hear  of  the  guerre 
de  revanche,  and  see  you,  who  hold  a  French- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  281 

speaking  province  and  would  never  think  of 
surrendering  it,  take  part  and  lot  against  us 
in  an  enmity  based  on  the  fact  of  our  holding 
a  German-speaking  province  which  we  will 
not  surrender.  Again  I  ask  you,  what  would 
you  have  us  do? 

"I  will  not  insult  you  by  supposing  that 
you  deem  our  fleet  to  have  anything  to  do 
with  a  desire  to  invade  India,  or  Canada,  or 
Australia.  Even  the  blindest  of  your  coun- 
trymen have  ceased  even  to  pretend  that  you 
are  in  greater  danger  from  us  than  from 
Russia  in  India,  or  from  the  United  States 
in  Canada,  or  from  Japan  in  Australia.  You 
know  that  that  is  not  the  cause  of  our  fleet, 
and  although  I  am  not  an  expert  in  high 
politics  I  will  make  this  guess — that  readily 
would  we  agree  to  the  limitation  of  our  fleet 
if  your  statesmen  would  plainly  and  cate- 
gorically declare  the  neutrality  of  England 
in  these  ancient  quarrels  of  ourselves  and 
France.  But  they  will  not  declare  that  neu- 
trality. More  and  more  are  your  people 
declaring  that  they  are  the  friends  and  allies 
of  our  enemies.  Well,  that  is  why  we  are 
building.  Let  it  be  on  your  head." 

This,  of  course,  is  an  entirely  partial  view — it 
is  certainly  not  the  writer's — but  it  is  plausible 
enough,  given  the  bias  of  ordinary  patriotism,  to 
furnish  the  basis  and  background  of  the  kind  of 
appeal  that  the  German  militarists  made  for  a 
thoroughly  efficient  military  machine.  And  once 


282  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

you  have  that,  the  border  line  between  defence 
and  preventive  war  becomes  very,  very  thin. 

*     * 

Were  not  the  religious  wars  also  wars  of  fear  ? 
There  is  a  story  somewhere  of  a  conversation 
that  took  place  between  a  Catholic  statesman  and 
a  Huguenot  just  after  the  Massacre  of  St.  Bar- 
tholomew. It  ran — translated  into  the  speech 
of  our  time — something  like  this: 

Huguenot:  I  submit,  Your  Eminence,  that 
this  affair  of  the  other  night  is  a  very  regret- 
table one. 

Catholic  Eminence:  Agreed.  But  you 
cannot  ask  us  Catholics  to  commit  political 
suicide.  You  are  perfectly  aware,  of  course, 
that  the  Huguenots  have  been  growing  very 
greatly  in  power  of  late.  They  have,  in  fact, 
formed  a  State  within  a  State.  If  they  grow 
much  in  power  they  will  dominate  us.  And 
then  they  will  massacre  us.  And  if  needs  be 
we  are  prepared  to  massacre  them  to  prevent 
their  doing  it. 

Huguenot:  But  need  there  be  any  massacr- 
ing about  it.  Can't  we  agree  that  these  dif- 
ferences shall  not  be  settled  that  way.  Need 
we  make  them  a  matter  of  political  rivalry 
at  all? 

Catholic  Eminence:  I  spoke  as  a  statesman. 
I  will  now  speak  as  a  man  and  a  Catholic. 
Men  will  always  fight  about  their  religion, 
the  most  important  thing  that  concerns  them. 
We  can  imagine  a  man  submitting  such  dif- 


THE  PROBLEM  OE  POWER  283 

ferences  as  those  concerning  money  and 
property  to  the  decision  of  courts;  we  cer- 
tainly cannot  imagine  him,  if  we  believe  that 
he  has  an  immortal  soul  at  all,  submitting  the 
alleged  rights  of  heretics  to  such  tribunal. 
He  will  defend  his  religion  with  his  life  be- 
cause it  goes  beyond  his  life.  He  will  defend 
his  eternal  salvation  and  that  of  those  dear 
to  him  to  his  last  drop  of  blood. 

Huguenot:  Should  you  not  say  the  last 
drop  of  the  Huguenot's  blood  ? 

Catholic  Eminence:  So  long  as  the  heretic 
threatens,  as  he  does,  by  the  dissemination 
of  his  doctrines  the  eternal  salvation  of  our 
beloved  children,  yes.  What  is  the  momen- 
tary pain  of  a  slain  Huguenot  to  the  eternal 
torments  of  my  people,  whose  salvation  is 
placed  in  jeopardy  by  your  influence  ? 


We  see  here  fear  of  a  double  kind — fear  of  the 
Huguenot's  temporal  and  political  power  and  of 
the  spiritual  perversion  that  he  might  engender. 
But  there  was  a  fear  and  doubt  of  a  more  subtle 
kind :  the  Catholic's  fear  that  his  belief  would  not 
be  equal  to  meeting  unaided,  the  other's  belief,  a 
doubt  as  to  the  strength  of  his  own  spiritual 
forces. 

And  when  we  talk  of  this  war  as  a  spiritual 
conflict,  of  it  being  necessary  to  destroy  the 
Prussian  root  and  branch  in  order  that  he  shall 
not  impose  his  atrocious  ideals  and  morality  upon 


284  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  world,  are  we  not  revealing  a  doubt  in  the 
strength  of  our  own  moral  and  spiritual  forces? 

English  and  American  writers  without  num- 
ber have  spoken  of  the  need  of  saving  France — 
her  literature,  her  intellectual  contribution  to 
western  civilisation — implying  that  those  things 
would  be  destroyed  and  the  French  become  in 
their  spirits  and  minds  submissive  Prussians  if 
Germany  should  destroy  French  military  power. 

Well,  Germany  has  done  it  before — pretty 
thoroughly — but  the  Frenchmen  did  not  forth- 
with surrender  their  literature  and  those  special 
qualities  that  we  associate  with  France.  Van- 
quished France  since  1871  has  had  a  wider  intel- 
lectual and  moral  influence  in  the  Western  world 
than  victorious  Germany  since  that  date.  In  the 
same  way,  half  a  century  or  so  before  that, 
France,  with  which  men  had  come  to  associate 
the  democratic  idea,  was  defeated  by  reactionary 
Europe.  Did  the  democratic  idea  die? 

If  this  present  is  in  part  even,  a  war  of  fear, 
surely  it  is  worth  examining  the  nature  and 
origins  of  our  fears.  And  what  follows  is  not 
intended  as  an  argument  for  non-resistance — 
in  which  this  present  writer  most  emphatically 
does  not  believe — or  even  the  restriction  of 
resistance  to  non-military  forces,  but  as  a  contri- 
bution to  clearing  up  some  of  our  misunder- 
standing. And  one  can  strongly  believe  in  mili- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  285 

tary  defence  and  still  desire,  for  the  general 
understanding  of  the  issue,  to  have  the  case  for 
the  use  of  non-military  forces  clearly  stated. 
If  we  had  a  few  men  of  intellectual  weight  in 
England — or  in  France  and  Germany — stating 
that  case  they  would  certainly  not  convert  those 
countries,  and  so  deprive  them  of  military  de- 
fence ;  but  they  might  compel  Europeans  generally 
to  question  the  ground  of  certain  fears,  instead  of 
re-acting  to  them  without  thought;  by  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  foundations  help  perhaps  to  modify 
the  temper  of  Europe  just  as  a  somewhat  analo- 
gous discussion  helped  to  modify  its  temper  con- 
cerning religious  conflict. 

It  may  sound  like  playing  with  paradox  to  say 
that  military  submission  to  Germany  would  pos- 
sibly contain  less  risks  of  moral  Prussianisation 
than  successful  military  resistance  to  her.  And 
yet  there  is  in  it  a  measure  of  truth.12 


"I  have  dealt  with  the  impossibility  of  widespread  tribute  by 
a  conqueror  in  our  times  in  "The  Great  Illusion"  and  in  "Arms 
and-  Industry."  The  Hon.  Bertrand  Russell,  the  Cambridge 
mathematical  philosopher,  has  recently  put  the  case  picturesquely 
(The  Atlantic  Monthly,  August,  1915).  He  says:  "The  greatest 
sum  which  foreigners  could  theoretically  exact  would  be  the 
total  economic  rent  of  the  land  and  natural  resources  of  Eng- 
land. In  fact  economic  rent  has  been  defined  as  what  can  be 
and  historically  has  been  extorted  by  such  means.  The  rent 
now  paid  to  land-owners  in  England  is  the  outcome  of  the 
exactions  made  by  William  the  Conqueror  and  his  Barons.  The 
law  ...  is  the  outcome  of  that  set  up  at  that  time  .  .  .  From 


286  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

I  attempted  to  show  in  an  earlier  chapter  that 
the  defeat  of  Germany  might  quite  conceivably 
result  in  the  Prussianisation  of  the  victor.  But 

inertia  and  lack  of  imagination  the  English  at  the  present  day 
continue  to  pay  the  land-owners  vast  sums  to  which  the  latter 
have  no  right  but  that  of  conquest.  The  working  classes,  the 
shop  keepers,  manufacturers  and  merchants,  the  literary  men  and 
men  of  science,  and  all  the  people  who  make  England  of  any 
account  in  the  world,  have  at  the  most  an  infinitesimal  and  acci- 
dental share  in  the  rental  of  England.  The  men  who  have  a 
share  use  their  rents  in  luxury,  political  corruption,  taking  the 
lives  of  birds  and  depopulating  and  enslaving  the  rural  districts. 
This  way  of  life  is  that  which  all  Englishmen  and  women  con- 
sider the  most  admirable.  Those  who  are  any  way  near  to 
achieving  it  struggle  to  attain  it  completely  and  those  who  are 
more  remote  from  it  read  serial  stories  about  it  as  their  ancestors 
would  have  read  of  the  joys  of  paradise. 

"It  is  this  life  of  the  idle  rich  which  would  be  curtailed  if  the 
Germans  exacted  tribute  from  England.  Everything  in  England 
that  is  not  positively  harmful  would  be  untouched :  wages  and 
other  earned  incomes  could  not  be  diminished  without  diminish- 
ing the  productivity  of  English  labour  and  so  lessening  the 
capacity  for  paying  tribute !  Our  snobbish  instincts,  if  the  idle 
rich  were  abolished,  might  be  driven  by  want  of  other  outlet  into 
admiration  of  real  merit.  And  if  the  Germans  could  effect  that 
for  us  they  would  have  deserved  their  tribute. 

"It  is  very  doubtful  indeed  whether  Germans  would  exact 
from  us  a  larger  tribute  than  we  exact  from  ourselves  in  resist- 
ing them.  ...  A  debt  of  a  thousand  million  created  by  the  war 
represents  an  annual  payment  of  forty  million  pounds.  All  this, 
together  with  the  annual  expenditure  on  the  army  and  navy,  we 
might  have  paid  to  the  Germans  without  being  any  poorer  than 
we  shall  be  when  the  war  ends.  This  represents  an  incredibly 
larger  tribute  than  any  derived  from  India." 

I  think  most  economists  would  question  even  the  possibility 
of  exacting  from  a  modern  nation  its  economic  rent  as  foreign 
tribute.  In  practice  it  would  be  found  impossible  to  exact  even 
a  considerable  proportion  of  it. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  287 

it  may  also  conceivably  be  true  that  just  as 
we  may  surrender  to  an  alien  culture,  while 
we  continue  to  fight  the  alien  arms,  resistance 
to  the  alien  culture  and  morality  can  go  on 
long  after  military  resistance  has  ceased.  Forty 
years  of  German  domination  in  Alsace  and 
Poland,  when  the  military  power  of  the  Prussian 
was  as  complete  as  it  possibly  could  be  in  those 
territories,  did  not  suffice  to  Germanise  them. 
The  same  sort  of  moral  resistance  has  kept  alive 
a  separate  national  conception  and  culture  during 
centuries  in  Ireland  in  the  face  of  ruthless  alien 
regimentation.  And  these  forces  of  resistance 
become  stronger  with  the  development  of  such 
things  as  printing,  education,  cheap  newspapers, 
and  other  instruments  of  expression  which  make 
a  tradition  or  ideal  a  very  elusive  thing  to  handle. 
"You  can  do  most  things  with  bayonets,"  once 
said  a  Russian  general  in  Poland,  "except  sit  on 
them." 

And  the  converse  is  true:  That  an  absence  of 
political  domination  does  not  necessarily  involve 
an  absence  of  moral  and  intellectual  influence  on 
the  part  of  aliens.  Japan,  which  is  not  under 
direct  European  political  control,  has  become 
Europeanised  much  more  rapidly  than  India, 
which  is  under  the  very  efficient  political  control 
of  the  leading  European  power.  America  was 
not  lost  to  English  literary,  political,  or  social 


288  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

influences  when  the  political  tie  was  severed.  The 
ideas  of  the  French  Revolution  did  not  make 
much  headway  in  Europe  while  French  arms 
were  predominant;  they  made  their  greatest 
headway  in  a  period  which  followed  the  defeat 
of  French  arms.  The  greatest  change  of  all, 
perhaps,  in  the  nature  of  European  society  in  the 
last  two  hundred  years  was  not  due  to  political 
forces  at  all,  but  to  the  industrial  revolution. 

But  what  of  the  horrors  of  hostile  invasion,  the 
atrocities,  as  in  Belgium? 

In  making  that  objection  we  have  forgotten 
certain  things.  When  we  speak  of  the  abandon- 
ment of  physical  resistance  to  invasion,  we  have 
a  vision  of  a  vast  army  landing  in  a  country, 
finding  no  resistance,  and  forthwith  subjecting 
that  country  to  sack  and  destruction.  But  that 
is  to  ignore  not  only  the  whole  character  of  human 
nature  but  the  way  things  actually  work  in 
practice. 

Take  the  case  of  the  German  who  in  the  methods 
of  his  warfare  we  believe  to  be  more  brutal  and 
ruthless  than  any  other  modern  European  man. 
We  say:  It  is  childish  to  put  yourself  within  the 
power  of  such  a  wild  beast;  he  respects  nothing 
but  force.  Yet  for  generations  thousands  of  us 
have  without  hesitation  put  ourselves,  our  women- 
folk, our  children,  with  perfect  confidence  within 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  289 

his  absolute  power.  We  have  sent  our  children 
to  German  schools,  our  invalids  to  German  sana- 
toria, placing  them  absolutely  beyond  the  reach 
of  our  army  or  police.  And  it  never  even  oc- 
curred to  us  that  they  were  in  any  danger.  As  in 
truth  they  were  not.  Germany  has  maintained 
civil  order  better  than  any  country  in  Europe: 
crimes  of  violence  in  Germany  are  little  more  than 
half  what  they  are  even  in  England,  infinitely  less 
than  in  the  United  States.  The  schoolmaster  in 
Germany  to  whom  with  perfect  confidence  we 
entrust  our  children,  the  surgeon  who  operates 
upon  us,  only  become  murderous  animals  when 
organised  into  an  army,  when  they  meet  the  re- 
sistance of  other  armies,  or  presumably  armed 
populations.  There  have  been  no  massacres  in 
Luxemburg — not  a  person  has  been  hurt — al- 
though it  is  in  German  occupation.  There  has 
been  no  killing  in  Brussels,  though  the  German 
army  has  been  there  a  year  or  more. 

But  even  when  we  keep  these  facts  in  mind  we 
have  not  got  to  the  heart  of  the  matter.  If  there 
were  no  armies  to  meet  it,  there  would  be  no 
German  army,  or  a  very  small  one.  How  have 
the  German  people  been  persuaded  during  forty 
years  to  give  their  lives  and  wealth,  those  they 
love,  and  the  taxes  that  they  pay,  to  the  creation 
of  this  marvelous  military  machine?  Because 
the  German  government  managed  to  persuade 


290  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

them  that  it  was  necessary  to  overcome  the 
armies  that  it  would  have  to  meet.  Germany 
would  not  maintain  an  army  of  three  million  men 
during  forty  years  in  order  at  the  end  of  that 
period  to  annihilate  civil  populations  that  did  not 
possess  soldiers.  Even  the  German  taxpayer 
would  object  to  such  a  burden  when  a  few  bodies 
of  properly  trained  butchers  would  perform  the 
task  just  as  well. 

But  if  you  had  not  had  a  large  army  during 
forty  years  in  Germany,  the  whole  military 
system  would  have  yielded  to  civilian  influence: 
indeed,  there  would  have  been  no  military  system. 
You  can't  have  that  without  a  great  army.  Would 
German  militarism  and  all  that  it  has  meant  to 
Europe  have  arisen? 

When  in  conversation  in  past  years  French- 
men have  alleged  an  overpowering  determination 
on  the  part  of  Germans  to  conquer  their  country, 
I  have  often  put  this  question:  "Why  did  not 
Germany  do  it  in  1871,  when  France  was  abso- 
lutely prostrate;  her  military  power  broken;  her 
state  dismembered,  and  German  troops  in  occupa- 
tion of  the  whole  country,  a  German  government 
established  at  Paris?" 

Suppose  that  when  the  last  German  soldier  had 
been  withdrawn  from  France  after  that  war, 
Frenchmen  had  argued  thus :  "The  Germans  have 
been,  and  gone.  If  they  had  wanted  to  stay  and 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  291 

rule  our  country,  then  was  their  chance.  They 
did  not  take  it,  so  presumably  our  actual  soil  is 
safe.  We  will  not  create  another  army.  These 
millions  of  youths  will  no  longer  give  the  best 
years  of  their  lives  to  the  drill  sergeant  and  to  the 
barracks,  but  to  economic  and  intellectual  effi- 
ciency; to  social  reorganisation,  to  strengthening 
the  influence  throughout  the  world  of  French 
thought  and  culture." 

It  is  true  that  there  would  have  been  no  con- 
quests in  Tonkin  or  Madagascar,  nor  alliance 
with  Russia,  nor  complications  in  Morocco,  nor 
consequent  rivalry  with  Germany  as  to  who 
should  appoint  the  officials  to  administer  certain 
Negro  populations  in  Africa  (and  also  conse- 
quently certain  of  the  factors  of  the  great  war 
would  not  have  come  into  existence ) .  But  would 
the  setting  of  such  an  example  in  Europe,  the 
establishment  of  quite  a  new  method  in  "high 
politics,"  have  had  no  effect  on  their  subsequent 
development  ? 

Bismarck,  addressing  the  German  parliament 
in  1888,  said: 

If  I  were  to  come  before  you  and  say:  We  are  seri- 
ously menaced  by  France  and  Russia ;  it  is  to  be  foreseen 
that  we  shall  be  attacked;  that  is  my  conviction  as  a 
diplomat  based  on  military  information;  for  our  defence 
it  is  better  to  employ  the  anticipatory  thrust  of  the  attack 
and  open  hostilities  at  once ;  accordingly  I  ask  the  Imperial 


292  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Diet  for  a  credit  of  a  milliard  marks  in  order  to  start  the 
war  against  both  our  neighbours — well,  gentlemen,  I  do 
not  know  whether  you  have  sufficient  confidence  in  me  to 
vote  such  a  grant.  I  hope  not. 


But  if  Bismarck  was  doubtful  about  their  assent 
in  such  circumstances  as  those — and  if  he  was  not 
only  doubtful  but  could  infer  that  they  would  be 
right — what  would  have  been  the  attitude  of  the 
Reichstag  and  the  Nation  if  the  government  had 
been  obliged  to  say : 

Our  neighbours  cannot  invade  us  because  they  have 
nothing  to  invade  us  with.  But  we  intend  to  invade  their 
territory  and  to  conquer  them.  It  is  true  that  our  army 
will  have  no  army  to  meet,  so  that  a  large  army,  even  on 
military  grounds,  is  quite  unnecessary;  but  we  want  a 
large  army  by  way  of  showing  our  valour;  a  small  pro- 
portion of  it  only  will  be  used,  and  that  to  sack  and  burn, 
and  kill  unarmed,  defenceless  people. 

Do  you  think  that  in  these  conditions  the  sacri- 
fices necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  that  large 
— and  useless — army  would  have  been  made, 
year  after  year? 

What  actually  happened  was  that,  to  the  aston- 
ishment of  everybody,  the  crushed  and  beaten 
France  became  in  a  few  years  once  more  a  very 
formidable  military  power,  and  in  the  later  seven- 
ties German  militarists  were  believing  that  the 
crushing  might  all  have  to  be  done  again.  One 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POWER  293 

can  trace  in  these  years,13  in  the  history  of  Ger- 
man foreign  policy,  the  growth  of  a  justification 
of  "preventive  war,"  based  on  the  armaments  of 
alleged  enemies.14 

But  if,  despite  all,  the  last  penalty  would  in  the 
case  of  her  disarmament  have  been  paid  by 
France,  and  we  could  imagine  her  annexed  to 
Germany,  become  part  of  the  German  Empire, 
need  we,  even  then,  if  we  have  a  real  faith  in  the 
strength  of  moral  and  intellectual  forces,  believe 
that  her  mission  in  the  world  is  ended?  Would 
not  the  greatest  single  element  in  the  German 
Empire  then  be  French?  Would  the  moral  in- 
fluence of  forty  million  French,  the  effect  of  the 
intellectual  fermentation  of  their  art,  stage,  liter- 
ature, cease  and  in  no  way  affect  their  new  fellow 
subjects?  Does  not  all  evidence  go  to  show  that 
if  we  could  imagine  such  a  thing  taking  place 
the  incorporation  of  France  into  the  German 

"Bismarck  himself  quite  admitted  the  risk  of  the  military 
spirit  affecting  national  policy.  In  the  "Memoirs"  (p.  \\>, 
translation,  Vol.  ii  p.  103)  occurs  the  passage  quoting  him: 
".  .  .  That  the  General  Staff  and  its  chiefs  .  .  .  have  permitted 
themselves  to  be  misled  into  imperilling  peace  lies  in  the  necessary 
spirit  of  the  institution.  ...  A  spirit  I  should  not  desire  to  see 
disappear.  It  becomes  dangerous  only  under  a  monarch  whose 
policy  lacks  sense  of  proportion  and  capacity  of  resisting  one- 
sided and  constitutionally  unjustifiable  influences." 

"The  conflict  between  the  two  tendencies  is  brought  out  very 
clearly  in  Pfofessor  Monroe  Smith's  scholarly  and  pregnant 
article,  "Military  Strategy  versus  Diplomacy,"  in  the  Political 
Science  Quarterly  for  March,  1915. 


294  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Empire  would  mean  the  Frenchification  of  the 
German  and  the  Germanisation  of  the  French — 
perhaps  to  the  very  great  improvement  of  both? 

And  yet,  says  our  instinct  (and  it  happens  to 
be  mine),  men  should  die  rather  than  submit  to 
foreign  dictation.  To  hope  that  they  ever  will 
so  submit  is  to  hope  for  the  world's  salvation 
through  human  cowardice. 

And  yet  again  all  war — this  war — is  based  on 
the  belief  that  men  will  submit  to  foreign  dicta- 
tion rather  than  die.  The  English  believe  that 
if  they  beat  the  Germans  sufficiently  they  will 
give  in.  The  Germans  hope  that  if  they  frighten 
the  English  enough  they  will  yield.  Most  of  war 
and  its  operations  are  based  on  the  assumption 
that  the  enemy  will  obey  motives  that  we  won't. 

And,  moreover,  if  on  one  great  day  all  the  com- 
batants in  this  war  were  to  throw  down  their 
arms,  refuse  to  strike  another  blow,  come  out  of 
the  trenches  and  decline  absolutely  to  discuss  who 
began  it  or  who  first  used  poison  gas,  we  should 
know  that  these  transformed  men,  far  from  being 
craven  or  coward,  would  be  showing  qualities  of 
greater  hope  for  mankind's  future  than  all  the 
vast  heroisms  of  the  war  so  far  shown;  and  be 
performing  an  act  more  glorious  than  all  the 
military  victories  that  history  records. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

NON-MILITARY  MEANS  OF  INTER- 
NATIONAL COERCION 


Any  method  of  defence  in  the  modern  world,  including 
the  military,  involves  a  large  measure  of  international 
agreement:  the  present  war  has  necessitated  a  military 
alliance  between  nine  separate  and  very  diverse  states 
and  may  finally  number  more.  Yet  despite  this  large 
measure  of  agreement,  one  force,  that  of  economic 
pressure,  which  might  tell  most  effectively  against  Ger- 
many may  be  largely  ineffective,  partly  because  of  "leak- 
ages" owing  to  the  position  of  neutrals  but  much  more 
because  the  pressure  will  come  to  an  end  as  soon  as  the 
war  is  over.  Yet  much  of  the  motive  of  aggressive 
war — the  desire  for  "culture  domination"  and  commer- 
cial expansion — could  be  neutralised  and  even  reversed 
if  the  cost  of  aggression  were  worldwide  exclusion  of 
both  the  culture  and  the  commerce  of  the  aggressor, 
not  merely  during  a  war  but  until  such  time  as  the 
aggressive  policy  were  modified.  Recent  facts  go  to 
show  that  the  very  highly  developed  means  of  co- 
ordinated effort  which  nations  now  possess  would  make 
this  method  effective  where  in  the  past  it  would  not 
have  been.  In  any  case  its  worth  as  a  practical  means 
depends,  not  upon  its  absolute  effectiveness  as  an  instru- 
ment of  international  coercion,  but  its  relative  effective- 
ness as  compared  to  present  methods ;  or  as  an  aid  thereto. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

NON-MILITARY  MEANS  OF  INTER- 
NATIONAL COERCION 

THE  justification  for  America  concerning 
herself  with  the  possibilities  of  non-military 
means  of  enforcing  international  public  right,  is 
that  for  her  purposes,  military  means  are  ineffec- 
tive to  that  end,  however  successful  in  the  mili- 
tary field. 

However  great  be  America's  naval  and  mili- 
tary power,  she  cannot  defend  by  that  power  alone 
even  her  most  elementary  rights,  like  those 
violated  in  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania.  Did  she 
possess  to-day  the  greatest  fleet  in  the  world  she 
could  not  radically  alter  the  naval  situation  of  the 
present  war,  since  the  Western  Allies  have  a  sea 
supremacy  about  as  complete  as  ships  can  make  it. 

If  she  joined  the  Allies,  sending  armies  to 
France  or  Russia,  the  resultant  victory  might 
still  leave  America  without  any  assurance  that 
the  rights  for  which  she  had  fought  would  be 
respected  in  the  future ;  for  sea  law,  as  laid  down 
by  her  own  prospective  allies,  fails  to  meet  her 
claims.  She  might  after  victory  find  the  radical 

297 


298  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

reform  of  that  law,  which  alone  can  satisfy  the 
demands — moral  and  material — that  she  is  mak- 
ing, still  strenuously  opposed  by  her  own  military 
associates. 

Even  though  she  could  secure  agreement  be- 
forehand as  to  the  sea  law  that  was  to  follow  the 
war,  she  has  no  assurance  that  the  agreement 
would  outlive  the  military  alliance  on  which  its 
enforcement  depended.  There  is  a  vague  idea 
that  she  could  in  some  way  enforce  the  agree- 
ment by  her  own  naval  and  military  strength, 
becoming  for  that  purpose  the  "strongest  Power 
in  the  world";  but  nations  no  longer  fight  as 
units — they  fight  as  groups. 

This  war  has  demonstrated  that  a  nation  can 
no  longer  depend  either  for  its  security  or  for 
the  enforcement  of  its  views  of  right  on  its  own 
strength,  as  the  position  of  any  one  of  the  allied 
nations — France,  England,  Russia,  or  Italy — 
clearly  shows.  What  has  made  it  possible  for 
them  to  defend  themselves  is  an  international 
agreement — their  national  safety  depends  on 
treaties.  War  has  become  internationalised. 

If,  therefore,  America  intends  to  vindicate  her 
rights — perhaps  even  if  she  intends  to  secure  her 
mere  safety  on  land — by  military  means,  she,  too, 
must  do  what  even  the  most  powerful  military 
states  of  the  past  have  done :  enter  into  the  game 
of  military  alliances.  But,  for  America's  purposes 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  299 

— the  establishment  and  enforcement  of  certain 
international  laws,  for  instance — the  alliances 
must  be  permanent.  Of  the  very  few  things  that 
history  teaches  us,  with  any  certainty,  one  is  that 
these  military  alliances  do  not  outlast  the  pressure 
of  war  conditions. 

No  international  settlement  that  has  followed 
the  great  wars  ever  settled  or  endured.  The 
military  alliances  on  which  they  were  based  have 
been,  as  we  saw  from  the  facts  presented  in  a 
former  chapter,  unstable  and  short-lived.  As  for 
destroying  a  common  enemy,  like  the  Germany 
of  to-day,  those  same  facts  show  that  the  destruc- 
tion has  never  lasted  more  than  a  year  or  two; 
at  the  end  of  which  time  the  common  enemy,  the 
outlaw,  generally  became  the  ally  of  one  of  its 
policemen  against  all  the  rest;  and  the  whole 
process  of  alliance  shuffling  has  begun  again  da 
capo. 

The  usual  conclusion  from  all  this  is  that  the 
problem  is  insoluble.  We  indulge  in  a  sort  of 
fatalistic  dogmatism:  War  is  "inevitable";  "we 
shall  always  have  it  and  it  is  useless  to  try  to 
prevent  it";  "it  is  the  outcome  of  forces  beyond 
our  control";  "man  is  a  fighting  animal  ...  as 
long  as  human  nature  .  .  ." — and  so  forth. 

All  of  which,  obviously,  gives  not  the  slightest 
help  in  this  question  of  protecting  America's 
rights  and  interests.  It  is  merely  a  noisy  way 


300  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

of  running  away  from  the  problem.  The  question 
under  discussion  is  not  the  inevitability  or  other- 
wise of  war;  it  is  whether  we  can  make  war 
effective  for  the  purposes  for  which  it  is  waged — 
can  so  organise  our  relations  with  our  allies  that  it 
shall  achieve  the  ends  for  which  it  is  fought, 
which  heretofore  most  wars  have  not  done.  If 
we  say  that  this  is  Utopian,  we  merely  proclaim 
our  desire  to  be  relieved  of  the  fatigue  of  thought 
by  action  of  some  kind,  preferably  entertaining 
and  spectacular  action— action  which  at  the  same 
time  gratifies  an  instinct  or  satisfies  impatience. 
But  the  fighting,  however  gloriously  ineffective, 
must  finish  sooner  or  later,  and  then  once  more 
we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  problem: 
"How  shall  we  achieve  our  purpose?" 

I  have  said  that  war  itself  has  become  inter- 
nationalised and  depends  on  agreement  of  some 
kind.  Indeed  the  use  of  force  effectively  in 
human  affairs  generally  depends  on  agreement 
and  co-operation. 

And  as  it  is  supremely  important  in  this  matter 
to  realise  the  relation  between  co-operation — the 
possession  of  a  common  purpose — and  the  em- 
ployment of  physical  force,  I  want  to  tabulate 
a  few  of  those  truths  which  happen  to  bear  on 
this  problem  and  which,  because  they  are  so 
obvious,  are  generally  overlooked. 

We  are  often  told  that  the  world  is  governed 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  301 

in  the  last  resort  by  physical  force.  Well, 
there  are  animals  on  the  earth  that  have  im- 
measurably greater  physical  strength  than  man. 
They  do  not  govern  the  world.  Man,  who 
is  so  much  weaker,  eats  them,  or  makes  them 
work  for  him.  The  world,  indeed,  was  once 
peopled  by  immense  beasts  of  a  physical  strength 
bearing  about  the  same  relation  to  man's  that 
man's  does  to  the  blackbeetle's.  These  colossal 
creatures  have  all  disappeared,  superseded  by 
others  that  were  smaller  and  physically  weaker. 

So  it  is  evident  that  some  element  other  than 
physical  force  is  involved  in  survival.  Let  us 
push  the  inquiry  a  little  further. 

We  are  told  that  law  and  civilisation  rest  in 
the  last  resort  upon  force — the  police  or  the  army. 
Yet  the  police  or  the  army  obeys  the  instructions 
of  the  law.  What  physical  force  compels  it  to 
do  so,  ensures  that  it  shall  do  so?  Who  guards 
the  guardians?  What  is  our  final  "sanction,"  or 
means  of  compulsion?  It  is  an  oath,  a  contract, 
and  if  we  could  not  depend  upon  it  the  civilisation 
of  the  United  States  would  be  like  that  of  Mexico 
or  Hayti. 

When,  as  Democrats  or  Republicans,  we  vote 
against  an  existing  President,  how  do  we  know 
that  he  will  obey  our  votes  and  quietly  walk  out 
of  office?  The  army?  But  it  is  he  who  com- 
mands the  army;  the  army  does  not  command 


302  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

him.  The  army  would  stand  by  the  country? 
Then  what  is  controlling  its  act  is  a  conception  of 
constitutional  right,  not  physical  force,  since  it 
could  easily,  presumably,  make  itself  master  of  a 
hostile  Republican  or  Democratic  party,  as  the 
case  may  be.  Obviously  it  is  not  because  the 
North  American  is  more  military  that  he  is  saved 
from  certain  defects  of  South  American  civilisa- 
tion. Just  as  obviously  it  is  because  he  is  less 
military. 

An  Englishman  says:  "It  is  force  alone  which 
vindicates  Belgium's  rights."  But  what  put  the 
force  in  motion?  What  decided  England  to  go 
to  the  rescue  of  Belgium,  instead  of  remaining  at 
home  ?  It  was  a  thing  of  the  mind,  a  moral  thing, 
a  theory:  the  tradition  of  the  sanctity  of  treaties, 
the  theory  of  international  obligation,  a  sense  of 
contract,  if  you  will,  like  that  which  makes  the 
President  respect  the  hostile  vote  instead  of  in- 
triguing with  the  army,  and  the  army  obey  its 
oath  instead  of  intriguing  with  the  President,  or 
against  him.  Without  this  moral  thing  you  can- 
not get  even  the  effective  employment  of  force  in 
things  that  look  at  first  sight  like  sheer  violence. 
You  cannot,  for  instance,  have  piracy  without 
an  agreement  and  co-operation,  without  the  ob- 
servance of  treaty  rights  as  between  pirate  cap- 
tain and  crew.  If  every  member  of  the  crew  said : 
"Don't  bother  me  about  rules  and  obeying  the 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  303 

captain.  I've  got  a  pistol  and  I  mean  to  make  my 
own  rules  and  act  as  I  see  fit" — why,  of  course 
you  could  not  run  even  a  pirate  ship.  Success  in 
piracy  depended  a  great  deal  on  the  morals  and 
discipline  of  the  pirates — on  the  mind  of  the  cap- 
tain ;  his  fairness  in  dividing  the  booty ;  the  capac- 
ity of  the  crew  to  hang  together. 

Anyway,  alleges  the  man  who  is  so  sure  that 
nothing  but  physical  force  matters,  nations  can- 
not depend  upon  anything  but  their  own  strength ; 
and  all  international  agreements  are  futile. 

Well,  as  we  have  already  seen,  but  for  inter- 
national agreement  no  single  one  of  the  Allies 
in  the  present  war  would  be  safe.  If,  for 
instance,  France  had  had  to  depend  simply  upon 
her  own  strength  she  would  have  been  lost.  But 
she  had  an  alliance,  an  international  treaty,  and 
that  saved  her.  And  so  with  the  other  parties 
to  that  treaty.  And  if  Germany  is  beaten,  as, 
despite  her  immense  forces,  she  probably  will 
be,  it  is  because  she  depended  upon  her  own 
strength  alone  and  neglected  the  element  of 
"opinion"  in  other  nations  which  has  enabled  her 
enemies  to  range  the  world  against  her. 
"Opinion" — a  mere  moral  thing — was  something 
that  the  German  military  leaders  seem  to  have 
held  in  immense  contempt ;  and  that  contempt  will 
be  paid  for  by  Germany  at  the  price  of  defeat. 
For  opinion  comes  before  force,  since  it  deter- 


304  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

mines  the  direction  that  force  shall  take;  how  it 
shall  be  used. 

Force,  in  other  words,  is  not  a  thing  that  acts 
of  itself  in  human  affairs,  but  as  the  instrument 
of  a  human  will.  The  savage  who  happened  to 
be  born  with  a  longer  "reach"  than  others  of 
his  tribe  was  the  bully  of  the  whole  until  two 
weaker  men  put  their  heads  together  and  agreed 
to  co-operate,  and  so,  by  taking  him  front  and 
rear  at  the  same  time,  brought  his  tyranny  to  an 
end,  replacing  it  by  their  own;  which  continued 
until  three  weaker  men  were  able  to  act  as  one, 
and  so  on,  until  finally  we  got  a  combination  of 
the  whole  community  in  the  policeman.  The 
effectiveness  of  the  policeman  resides,  not  mainly 
in  the  fact  of  the  force  that  he  wields,  but  in  the 
fact  that  he  personifies  a  common  will,  which  is 
the  outcome  of  things  of  the  mind. 

When  you  have  something  resembling  a  com- 
mon will  you  can  get  the  policeman :  but  until  you 
get  that  agreement,  "force"  cannot  be  used  for 
the  ends  of  the  community  at  all.  The  final 
triumph  of  the  community  represented  the  slow 
growth  of  a  common  purpose  as  against  conflict- 
ing purposes. 

Now,  what  forms  the  basis  of  this  common 
purpose,  of  the  starting  point  of  common  action 
in  which  force  is  combined  instead  of  being 
cancelled  ? 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  305 

How  does  a  disorderly  group  of  individuals — 
an  early  collection  of  Western  pioneers,  for  in- 
stance— become  an  orderly  society  ?  Not  by  each 
of  the  individuals  going  as  heavily  armed  as  pos- 
sible and  taking  his  own  view  of  his  own  rights 
and  his  own  means  of  enforcing  them.  That 
gives  you  a  mining  camp,  where  they  "have  a  man 
for  breakfast  every  morning,"  or  those  Carolina 
mountain  counties,  the  counties  of  the  "crackers," 
where  a  feud  about  a  strayed  hog  will  wipe  out 
a  dozen  families.  When  we  say,  therefore,  that 
civilisation  is  based  upon  physical  force,  the 
statement  is  incomplete ;  there  is  plenty  of  physical 
force  in  a  mining  camp  and  among  the  Carolina 
"crackers";  plenty  of  guns,  armaments,  "de- 
fence" ;  much  more,  indeed,  in  proportion  to  popu- 
lation than  in  New  York  or  Boston.  And  yet 
the  physical  force  does  not  give  us  order  and 
civilisation;  it  gives  us  chaos. 

What,  then,  makes  a  society  out  of  a  fortuitous 
gathering  of  units?  The  law  courts  and  police? 
But  that  only  pushes  the  question  a  little  further 
back.  How  do  the  law  courts  and  police  come 
there?  The  police  do  not  descend  from  the  skies 
ready  made ;  they  do  not  impose  themselves  upon 
the  community.  They  are  the  creation  of  the 
community.  Before  you  can  have  the  police,  the 
community  must  get  together  and  decide  to  create 
it;  before  you  can  have  the  police  you  must  have 


306  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

a  law,  and  before  you  can  have  a  law  the  com- 
munity must  decide  what  it  is  to  be.  The  step 
which  turns  the  group  of  Western  pioneers  into 
an  orderly  community  is  their  coming  together 
and  agreeing  to  enforce  such  rules  as  are  neces- 
sary to  the  common  good.  And  there  is  no  mys- 
tery as  to  the  point  at  which  common  agreement 
starts.  There  is  one  matter  on  which  all  are 
agreed.  There  is  not  one  of  us  who  wants  to  be 
wiped  out.  Many  want  to  wipe  others  out,  want 
to  make  victims;  nobody  wants  to  be  a  victim. 
So  that  you  have  here,  in  this  desire  for  pro- 
tection, an  absolutely  universal  agreement. 

It  is  the  least  common  denominator,  and  it  is 
from  that  starting  point  of  common  agreement 
that  all  societies  are  created.  That  is  why  any 
society,  even  the  most  primitive,  will  protect  in 
some  degree  the  weak  against  the  strong,  be- 
cause each  is  aware  that  he  may  at  any  moment 
find  himself  accidentally  weaker  than  some  one 
else.  A  degenerate  loafer  with  an  automatic  pistol 
on  some  dark  night  is  more  "mighty"  than  the 
finest  athlete  or  physical  giant  who  happens  to 
be  unarmed.  We  have  decided  that  the  superior 
physical  power  of  any  one  individual — the  fact 
that  any  one  man  happens  to  have  his  sixshooter 
with  him  while  his  neighbors  have  not — shall  not 
give  him  by  virtue  of  that,  a  right  to  impose  his 
point  of  view.  The  community  has  agreed,  if  it 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  307 

is  on  the  road  to  civilisation,  that  such  a  strong 
man  shall  be  restrained.  They  will  cancel  his 
force  by  throwing  the  whole  force  of  the  com- 
munity against  it  and  in  favour  of  his  victim. 
They  may,  like  the  "crackers,"  be  unintelligent, 
suspicious,  like  most  ignorant  folk;  unable  to  or- 
ganise the  mechanism  for  achieving  what  they 
want,  but  they  all  want  this  security. 

Their  agreement  on  that  point  does  not  mean 
agreement  upon  all  points.  You  may  have  in 
a  community  Democrats,  Republicans,  Socialists, 
Populists,  Protestants,  and  Catholics,  atheists, 
homoeopaths  and  allopaths,  Latins  and  Anglo- 
Saxons,  every  imaginable  difference  of  race,  reli- 
gion and  opinion,  but  they  are  all  agreed  on 
the  one  point;  that  they  do  not  want  to  be  the 
victims  of  some  one  else's  gun.  So  they  decide 
that  any  one  who  attempts  to  use  his  gun  to 
enforce  his  own  view  shall  be  restrained;  all 
would  protect  his  prospective  victim. 

Now,  it  will  be  noted,  as  I  have  tried  to  make 
plain  in  preceding  chapters,  that  this  attitude  in- 
volves the  abandonment  of  "neutrality"  on  the 
part  of  the  community.  And  yet  the  aggressor 
might  be  right. 

That  involved  a  further  step — a  necessary  co- 
rollary— that  no  man  should  be  judge  of  his  own 
case.  He  must  submit  his  dispute  to  third-party 
decision.  The  individual  New  Yorker  who 


3o8  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

should  attempt  to  settle  a  business  difference — 
with  his  grocer  or  his  insurance  company  or  his 
banker — with  his  sixshooter,  would  be  restrained. 
The  fact  that  he  believed  himself  entirely  right 
and  his  opponent  wrong;  the  fact,  indeed,  that 
he  was  right  as  to  his  contention  on  the  difference, 
that  he  was  a  college  professor  and  the  grocer  an 
ignorant  person — none  of  this  would  be  accepted 
as  the  slightest  justification  for  settling  the  matter 
in  that  way ;  the  plea  that  he  was  using  might  on 
the  side  of  right  would  be  most  summarily  dis- 
missed. For  if  each  were  his  own  judge  as  to 
what  was  right  against  his  neighbour  no  society 
would  be  possible.  It  is  the  essence  of  a  social 
group  that  no  individual  shall  be  permitted  to 
make  himself  the  judge  of  his  own  cause  and  the 
executioner  of  his  own  verdict  in  any  difference 
that  he  may  have  with  a  neighbour ;  and  that  the 
whole  social  group  shall  combine  to  prevent  it. 

Now,  the  difference  between  the  "peace  man" 
and  the  "war  man"  is  generally  taken  as  being 
that  the  first  is  opposed  to  physical  force  and  the 
second  recognizes  the  need  for  it;  and  that  the 
"peace  man"  is  inconsistent  because  he  approves 
of  the  police,  and  that,  as  the  police  uses  physical 
force,  he  should  thereby  sanction  and  approve 
of  armies,  and  their  multiplication.  About  as 
reasonably  could  one  urge  that  in  some  way  a 
horse  chestnut  is  related  to  a  chestnut  horse. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  309 

What  is  the  difference  between  an  army  and 
a  police  force?  It  is  very  simple:  armies  are 
for  the  purpose  of  righting  one  another ;  the  police 
forces  are  not.  If  the  New  York  police  force 
were  raised  for  the  express  purpose  of  fighting 
the  Chicago  police — of  defending  New  York 
against  an  attack  from  the  Philadelphia  police — 
it  would  be  an  army.  An  army  is  not  for  the 
purpose  of  maintaining  order  and  restraining 
crime ;  the  German  army  did  not  need  to  maintain 
order  in  France,  and  did  not  go  there  for  that 
purpose.  Nor  did  the  French  army  need  to  main- 
tain order  in  Germany,  a  country  which  normally 
has  less  crime  in  it  than  any  country  in  the 
world.  In  our  chaotic  society  of  nations  the 
army  of  each  is  for  exactly  the  purpose  that  the 
sixshooter  of  each  individual  is  in  the  case  of  the 
Western  disorderly  pioneer;  it  is  that  each  may 
enforce  his  own  view  of  his  rights  as  against 
his  neighbour. 

The  army  of  Germany  or  Britain  is  not  like 
the  police  force  of  New  York,  the  creation  of 
the  community — of  the  community  of  nations, 
that  is.  It  is  merely  the  arm  which  each  indi- 
vidual has  created  for  himself,  which  he  uses,  not 
according  to  law  or  rule  upon  which  the  commun- 
ity (again  of  nations)  have  agreed,  but  according 
to  his  own  notion  of  right  or  justification.  Each 
is  quite  sure,  passionately  believing  itself  to  be 


310  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

right,  that  it  is  entitled  to  use  its  might  to  en- 
force its  view.  But  such  a  plea  would  never  for  a 
moment  be  accepted  in  any  civilised  community  of 
men.  And  it  is  because  it  is  accepted  by  the 
nations  that  they  do  not  at  present  form  a  com- 
munity in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term.  Until 
we  realise  that  no  individual  nation  as  against 
another  is  entitled  to  be  its  own  judge  of  what 
its  own  rights  are,  we  shall  not  make  much 
progress  to  making  out  of  them  a  real  society. 

We  are  so  much  the  slaves  of  words  that  I  am 
afraid  the  use  of  the  word  police  force  will  distort 
my  meaning.  We  have  heard  from  time  to  time 
a  good  deal  of  an  international  police  force,  and 
immediately  we  have  in  mind  an  army  and  navy 
controlled  by  an  international  body,  taking  their 
instructions  from  some  international  council  or 
court,  a  great  international  force  operating  at 
the  dictation  of  some  cumbrous  international 
machine — Cossacks  camping  in  Central  Park  to 
secure  the  enforcement  of  an  international  deci- 
sion hostile  to  the  will  of  the  whole  American 
people  and  secured  in  the  International  Congress 
as  the  result  of  a  snap  vote  in  which  a  combina- 
tion of  Japanese,  Haytian,  Siamese,  and  Turkish 
delegates  had  managed  to  secure  the  voting 
balance ! 

On  that  I  will  touch  at  greater  length  presently. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  311 

It  is  hardly  astonishing  that  those  at  all  familiar 
with  the  practical  difficulties  of  international 
politics  have  never  managed  to  take  very  seriously 
the  elaborate  paper  schemes  of  World  Federation 
which  flourish  so  abundantly  in  this  country.  If 
we  were  within  measurable  distance  of  having 
achieved  an  international  "will"  to  co-operate  so 
complete  as  to  agree  upon  the  numberless  and 
immensely  difficult  details  that  the  simplest 
Federation  plans  involve,  there  would  be  no  need 
for  Federation  so  far  as  war  prevention  was 
concerned,  because  war  would  not  take  place. 
Questions  like  the  proportional  representation  of 
the  nations  in  a  parliament  with  authority  to 
decide  matters  of  vital  interest,  whether  in  such 
a  parliament  China  should  count  for  four  times 
as  much  as  the  United  States  and,  if  not,  whether 
San  Domingo  on  some  principle  of  equality  should 
count  for  as  much,  are  at  present  even  greater 
difficulties  than  the  problems  which  it  would  be 
the  business  of  the  Parliament  to  solve  if  once 
it  could  be  created. 

One  need  not  rule  out  the  possibility  of  such 
a  Parliament,  nor  abandon  effort  toward  its 
creation.  But  neither  should  less  ambitious 
schemes  wait  upon  its  creation.  The  prac- 
tical thing  is  to  ask  whether  it  is  not  possible  to 
set  up  in  international  society,  the  operation  of 
forces  which  shall  in  fact  include  the  active  prin- 


312  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

ciple  of  policing:  that  is  to  say,  shall  represent 
the  common  will  on  at  least  the  one  point  of  pro- 
tection, integrity,  and  shall  be  coercive  of  the 
recalcitrant  member  who  challenges  that  will. 

Europe  has,  of  course,  had  a  shadowy  consti- 
tution intermittently,  even  in  modern  times,  with- 
out going  back  to  the  Roman  or  the  Holy  Roman 
ages,  or  to  Henri  IV  and  his  "Grand  Design." 
The  Peace  of  Westphalia  did  at  least  recog- 
nise the  existence  of  a  community  of  states  and  a 
public  law  of  sorts,  an  European  "system";  and 
the  Congresses  of  Vienna  and  Paris  a  new  and 
different  one.  Both  systems  frequently  broke 
down  in  part,  and  both,  at  the  last,  entirely. 

In  so  far  as  they  attempted  to  give  expression 
to  a  common  will  and  a  sanction  to  their  law, 
that  attempt  was  marked  by  two  characteristics 
which  obviously  in  part  underlay  their  failure: 
(i)  The  real  parties  to  the  Acts,  great  military 
states,  were  few  in  number;  (2)  They  depended 
upon  military  power  for  the  enforcement  of  their 
will.  Had  not  a  few  great  powers  virtually 
excluded  the  smaller  ones  from  any  weight  in 
the  Concert  (as  at  Vienna)  ;  and  had  the  forces 
which  lay  behind  the  treaties  been  other  than 
military,  the  results  might  have  been  more  satis- 
factory. 

It  is  true  that  there  have  been  international 
congresses  of  an  order  different  to  those  of 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  313 

Munster  and  Vienna,  but  they  got  over  the  diffi- 
culty of  sanction  by  deciding  to  have  none  at  all ! 
We  cannot  settle  the  difficulty  by  running  away 
from  it  in  that  fashion. 

It  is  certain  that  if  the  sanction  is  to  be  purely 
military,  the  real  parties  to  the  agreement  will 
be  few  in  number.  The  military  co-operation  of 
an  Argentina,  or  even  a  Portugal,  in  resistance  to 
a  Russian  invasion  of  Sweden,  or  a  German  one 
of  Belgium,  is  of  very  doubtful  effectiveness. 
And  yet  when  the  alliance  is  composed  of  just 
a  few  great  states  the  defection  of  one  state  is 
likely  to  split  the  combination  into  two  hostile 
groups  and  create  a  situation  in  which  there  is  an 
attempt  on  the  part  of  the  one  group  to  exchange 
the  condition  of  partnership  for  that  of  mastery. 

And  this  too  is,  of  course,  aided  by  that  peculiar 
psychology  of  power  and  military  effectiveness 
touched  on  in  the  last  chapter.  What  has  made 
Germany  desire  to  dominate  the  Europe  of  which 
at  one  time  she  was  perfectly  content  to  be  a 
partner,  is  her  growing  effectiveness  in  that 
military  power  which  in  the  first  instance  was 
merely  a  contributon  to  the  common  stock. 

Can  these  two  dangerous  characteristics  of  the 
past,  which  have  marked  the  great  European 
coalitions  since  the  Renaissance,  in  future  be 
avoided  ? 

There  is  at  least  one  favourable  circumstance: 


314  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

the  parties  to  the  European  agreement  of  to- 
morrow will  probably  be  numerous.  The  com- 
batants in  the  present  war  number  a  round  dozen, 
may  number  fifteen  before  it  is  over ;  and  if  those 
directly  affected  by  the  war  and  its  problems  are 
to  have  any  part  in  the  settlement,  most  of  the 
civilised  world  will  be  involved. 

If  the  Congress  even  pretends  to  "settle"  any- 
thing at  all  it  will  necessarily,  of  course,  have  to 
decide  how  it  proposes  to  ensure  the  permanence 
of  the  rearrangement  which  it  may  make,  the 
carrying  out  of  the  decrees  it  may  promulgate. 
To  put  it  more  briefly,  it  will  have  to  consider  the 
question :  "How  shall  we  deal  with  the  party  that 
in  a  year  or  two  attacks  our  decision  and  violates 
the  treaty  guaranteeing  it?"  If  the  implication 
is  to  be  that  nothing  will  be  done — if  Austria 
may,  at  the  moment  most  favourable  for  her, 
proceed  to  take  back  the  Trentino,  or  Servia 
her  territories  ceded  to  Bulgaria,  or  what  not 
— the  whole  thing  will,  of  course,  be  a  futility 
too  monstrous  for  words,  and  that  public  right 
and  the  greater  security  of  the  lesser  states  which 
Mr.  Asquith  has  told  us  were  the  main  objects 
of  the  war,  will  be  more  remote  than  ever. 

And  yet  the  perpetuation  of  the  old  alliance 
arrangements  will  create  again  the  condition 
which  existed  in  Europe  in  July,  1914,  when  a 
difference  with  a  small  Balkan  State  over  a 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  315 

political  assassination  precipitates,  overnight,  a 
war  which  finally  involves  twelve  nations,  the 
killing  or  maiming  probably  before  its  close  of 
some  ten  millions  of  men,  and  the  piling  up  of 
burdens  which  virtually  place  a  generation  of 
Europeans  in  pawn  in  order  to  defray  the  cost  of 
it.  Yet,  it  was  a  war  which  an  English  ambas- 
sador, who  was  in  the  thick  of  the  negotiations, 
declared  a  ten  days'  delay  would  have  prevented. 

Will  the  future  Congress  of  settlement  so  leave 
things  that  when  such  an  incident  occurs  again, 
Europe  is  in  precisely  the  same  condition  of  chaos, 
so  far  as  any  preconcerted  policy  or  plan  is  con- 
cerned, as  it  was  in  July,  1914? 

It  is  not,  of  course,  a  matter  merely  of  creating 
some  Council  of  Enquiry  and  decreeing  that  an 
incident  like  the  Serajevo  assassination  be  sub- 
mitted to  it.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  mere 
existence  of  such  a  Council  would  have  been  more 
effective  in  stopping  the  action  of  the  Central 
powers  than  was  the  offer  of  an  international 
conference  actually  made. 

The  truth  is  that  though  the  whole  system  of 
European  armaments  is  based  on  the  presumption 
that  states  will  commit  aggression  when  oppor- 
tunity offers,  and  though  Europe  had  for  a  gener- 
ation been  piling  up  armaments  as  never  before  in 
history,  the  force  it  had  so  acquired  had  no  deter- 
rent effect  on  the  aggressors,  and  when  used  was 


316  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

rendered  largely  ineffective  owing  to  factors 
which,  practically  speaking,  had  not  been  taken 
into  account  at  all.  There  was  plenty  of  force  in 
Europe  to  render  a  common  policy  effective; 
there  was  no  common  policy. 

European  military  force  failed  as  a  preventive 
of  aggression  in  Germany's  case  because  there 
was  no  certainty  that  any  overwhelming  part  of 
it  would  be  used  against  Germany.  There  was  no 
certainty  that  England  would  not  remain  neutral ; 
no  certainty  that  Belgium  would  refuse  the  pas- 
sage of  troops;  nor  that  Japan  would  be  one  of 
the  Allies ;  nor  that  Italy  would  "rat" ;  nor  what 
part  the  Balkan  states  would  play.  There  are 
plenty  of  gambling  chances  here  to  a  state  that 
becomes  bitten  with  military  ambitions. 

Just  as  uncertain  were  the  effects  of  England's 
command  of  the  sea.  Would  food  importation  be 
allowed?  How  far  would  the  position  of  the 
neutral  states  facilitate  the  securing  of  supplies? 
Could  not  America,  as  the  champion  of  neutrals, 
be  counted  on  for  ensuring  large  imports  of  food 
and  raw  material  ?  And,  finally,  if  German  effort 
failed  it  would  not  fail  in  such  a  way  as  to  penalise 
or  handicap  Germany's  future  in  the  world  at 
large. 

Obviously,  until  we  get  agreement  on  the  points 
involved  here,  there  can  be  no  effective  common 
action  against  a  recalcitrant  state.  And  that 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  317 

agreement  must  just  as  obviously  include  many 
States,  great  and  small,  and  cover  the  economic 
as  well  as  the  military  contribution  of  each.  That 
the  lesser  state  can  play  an  important  part  is 
shown  by  the  spectacle,  in  this  war,  of  the  great 
Powers,  going  hat  in  hand  to  some  Balkan 
Premier,  begging  him  to  save  Western  civilisa- 
tion by  intervention  at  the  crucial  moment,  and 
also  by  the  fact  that  it  is  the  position  of  such 
states  as  Holland  and  Sweden  that  has  rendered 
the  economic  force  of  sea  power,  in  part  at  least, 
ineffective.  One  may  doubt  whether  in  future 
European  arrangements  the  lesser  states,  whose 
territorial  integrity  the  coalition  will  doubtless  be 
pledged  to  uphold,  will  be  allowed  to  frustrate  in 
some  degree  the  effectiveness  of  a  war  waged  on 
behalf  of  a  public  right  which  is  for  them  their 
only  guarantee  of  security.  Note  the  situation 
in  the  present  war.  States  like  Holland  and  the 
Scandinavian,  though  not  directly  involved,  are 
nevertheless  vitally  interested  in  the  outcome,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  if  Germany  were  com- 
pletely successful  it  is  certain  their  future  position 
would  be  extraordinarily  insecure.  Yet  these 
countries,  even  against  their  will,  served  in  the 
early  part  of  the  war  as  entrepots  for  the  supply 
of  Germany. 

It  is  not  generally  realised  how  far  from  com- 
plete is  the  isolation  of  Germany.     She  has  been 


318  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

in  daily  communication  with  the  outside  world 
by  mail  and  cable.  The  moral — and  military — 
advantage  of  this  is  immense;  while  during  the 
first  six  months  of  the  war  the  flow  of  materials 
of  all  kinds — including  ammunition — was  very 
great  indeed. 

I  want  to  suggest  here  that  the  forces  of  Europe 
will  not  be  really  deterrent  of  aggression  until 
the  following  conditions  at  least  are  fulfilled: 

(a)  The  forces  placed  behind  a  policy  the  first 
object  of  which  shall  be  to  deter  aggression; 

(b)  aggression  so  defined  as  to  have  no  reference 
to  the  merits  of  a  dispute  between  two  nations 
or  groups,  but  to  consist  simply  in  taking  any 
belligerent    action   to    enforce    a    state's    claim 
against  another  without  first  having  submitted 
that   claim   to   international   enquiry;    (c)    the 
economic  pressure  which  is  an  essential  part  of 
military  operations  rendered  effective  by  the  co- 
operation of  states  which  do  not  necessarily  give 
military  aid  at  all;   (d)   economic  pressure  so 
organised  as  to  be  capable  of  prolongation  be- 
yond the  period  of  military  operations;  and  (e) 
the  penalties  attaching  to  aggression  made  so 
plain  as  to  be  realised  beforehand  by  any  people 
whose     government     tends     to    drift     towards 
aggression. 

If  the  new  Congress  of  Vienna  is  effective, 
those  conditions  will  be  fulfilled. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  319 

Any  arrangement  which  includes  them  would 
partake  of  the  nature  of  a  league  of  mutual  guar- 
antee of  integrity,  and  would  be  one  in  which 
there  would  be  fair  hope  of  economic  pressure 
gradually  replacing  military  force  as  the  com- 
pelling sanction.  Economic  pressure  might  be 
that  first  felt  if  the  outstanding  feature  of  the 
arrangement  were  that  any  constituent  state 
resorting  to  hostilities  as  the  result  of  a  differ- 
ence with  another,  not  previously  submitted  to  an 
international  court  of  enquiry,  by  that  fact  caused 
boycott  or  nonintercourse  to  be  proclaimed  and 
maintained  against  it  by  the  whole  group.  This 
would  not  prevent  certain  members  of  the  group 
from  carrying  on  military  operations,  as  well, 
against  it.  Some  of  the  group  would  go  to  war 
in  the  military  sense — all  in  the  economic  sense; 
the  respective  roles  would  be  so  distributed  as  to 
secure  the  most  effective  action.  From  the 
moment  of  the  offending  nation's  defiance  of  the 
international  agreement  to  which  it  had  been  a 
party,  its  ships  could  enter  no  civilised  ports  out- 
side its  own,  nor  leave  them.  Payment  of  debts 
to  it  would  be  withheld;  the  commercial  paper 
of  its  citizens  would  not  be  discounted ;  its  citizens 
could  not  travel  in  any  civilised  country  in  the 
world,  their  passports  being  no  longer  recognised. 

Thus,  the  outlaw  nation  could  neither  receive 
from  nor  send  to  the  outside  world  material  or 


320  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

communication  of  any  kind — neither  food  nor 
raw  material  of  manufacture,  nor  letters,  nor 
cables.  Money  due  to  him  throughout  the  world 
would  be  sequestrated  for  disposal  finally  as  the 
international  court's  judgment  should  direct ;  and 
that  rule  would  apply  to  royalties  on  patents  and 
publications,  and  would,  of  course,  involve  pre- 
cautionary seizure  or  sequestration  of  all  prop- 
erty— ships,  goods,  bank  balances,  businesses — 
held  by  that  nation's  citizens  abroad. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  at  the  present  stage  of 
international  understanding  this  arrangement 
could  be  carried  beyond  the  point  of  using  it  as 
a  means  to  secure  delay  for  enquiry  in  inter- 
national disputes.  Its  use  as  a  sanction  for  the 
judgments  of  international  tribunals  will  prob- 
ably require  a  wider  agreement  as  to  the  founda- 
tions of  international  law  than  at  present  exists. 
But  a  union  of  Christendom  on  the  basis  of 
common  action  against  aggression  would  be  a 
very  great  step  to  the  more  ambitious  plans. 

It  has,  however,  been  suggested1  to  use  this 
method  as  a  sanction  for  the  judgment  of  an 
international  court  in  the  following  terms : 

In  the  event  of  non-compliance  with  any 
decision  or  decree  or  injunction  of  the  Inter- 
national High  Court,  or  of  non-payment  of 
the  damages,  compensation,  or  fine  within  the 

*At  a  conference  organised  by  the  Fabian  Society,  July,  1915. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  321 

time  specified  for  such  payment,  the  Court 
may  decree  execution  and  may  call  upon  the 
Constituent  States  or  upon  some  or  any  of 
them,  to  put  in  operation,  after  duly  pub- 
lished notice,  for  such  period  and  under  such 
condition  as  may  be  arranged,  the  following 
sanctions : 

(a)  To  prohibit  all  postal,  telegraphic, 
telephonic,  and  wireless  communication  with 
the  recalcitrant  state; 

(b)  To  prohibit  all  passenger  traffic  (other 
than  the  exit  of  foreigners),  whether  by  ship, 
railway,  canal,  or  road,  to  or  from  the  re- 
calcitrant state; 

(c)  To  prohibit  the  entrance  into  any  port 
of  the  Constituent  States  of  any  of  the  ships 
registered  as  belonging  to  the  recalcitrant 
state,  except  so  far  as  may  be  necessary  for 
any  of  them  to  seek  safety,  in  which  case 
such  ship  or  ships  shall  be  interned; 

(d)  To  prohibit  the  payment  of  any  debts 
due  to  the  citizens,  companies,  or  subordinate 
administrations  of  the  recalcitrant  state,  or 
to  its  national  Government;  and,  if  thought 
fit,  to  direct  that  payment  of  such  debts  shall 
be  made  only  to  one  or  other  of  the  Con- 
stituent  Governments,   which   shall  give   a 
good   and   legally  valid  discharge   for  the 
same,  and  shall  account  for  the  net  proceeds 
thereof  to  the  International  High  Court; 

(e)  To  lay  an  embargo  on  any  or  all  ships 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  such  Constituent 
State  or  States  registered  as  belonging  to  the 
recalcitrant  State; 


322  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

(f)  To  prohibit  any  lending  of  capital  or 
other  moneys  to  the  citizens,  companies,  or 
subordinate  administrations  of  the  recalci- 
trant State,  or  to  its  national  Government ; 

(g)  To  prohibit  the  issue  or  dealing  in  or 
quotation  on  the  Stock  Exchange  or  in  the 
press  of  any  new  loans,  debentures,  shares, 
notes,  or  securities  of  any  kind  by  any  of  the 
citizens,  companies  or  subordinate  adminis- 
trations of  the  recalcitrant  State,  or  of  its 
national  Government; 

(h)  To  prohibit  all  imports,  or  certain 
specified  imports,  coming  from  the  recalci- 
trant State,  or  originating  within  it; 

(i)  To  prohibit  all  exports,  or  certain 
specified  exports  consigned  directly  to  the 
recalcitrant  State,  or  destined  for  it. 


It  should  be  noted  that  if  the  future  European 
coalition  means  business  at  all  in  giving  perma- 
nent effect  to  its  settlement  provisions,  the  chief 
powers  would  be  committed,  during  any  period 
of  war,  by  virtue  of  their  military  obligations, 
to  everything  contained  in  the  plan  just  outlined. 
All  that  the  project  under  discussion  involves 
in  addition  is  that  (i)  Certain  states  interested 
in  the  observance  of  public  right,  but  which, 
by  their  circumstances,  are  not  suited  to  mili- 
tary co-operation,  should  give  economic  aid  by 
taking  part  in  the  embargo  arrangements. 
They  should  not  be  neutral,  but  should  refuse 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  323 

intercourse  with  the  recalcitrant  state  while 
according  it  to  the  others.  (2)  That  such  co- 
operation should  be  duly  organised  beforehand 
by  public  arrangement  and  be  recognised  as 
part  of  the  normal  measures  of  international 
public  safety  and,  being  duly  recognised  in 
this  way,  should  become  part  of  international 
law — an  amended  law  in  so  far  as  the  rules  of 
neutrality  are  concerned.  (3)  That  the  arrange- 
ments should  include  provisions  for  prolonging 
embargo  or  discrimination  against  an  offending 
state  after  the  period  of  military  operations  had 
ceased. 

The  first  point  that  occurs  to  one,  of  course, 
in  considering  such  a  plan  is  that  it  has  proven 
ineffective  in  the  present  war  since  this  condi- 
tion of  non-intercourse  is  exactly  that  in  which 
Germany  now  finds  herself,  and  it  is  not  at  all 
effective. 

To  which  I  reply : 

i.  That  Germany,  as  already  pointed  out,  is 
not  yet  subject  to  a  condition  of  complete  non- 
intercourse,  since  from  the  beginning  of  the  war 
she  has  been  receiving  her  mail  and  cables  and 
maintaining  communication  with  the  outside 
world,  morally  an  immensely  important  factor. 
Nor  is  it  entirely  moral.  Large  supplies  have, 
despite  the  naval  blockade,  come  to  her  through 
Scandinavia  and  Holland. 


324  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

2.  That,  though  of  slow  operation,  it  is  the 
economic  factor  which  in  the  end  will  be  the 
decisive  one  in  the  operations  against  Germany; 
as  the  ring  tightens  and  a  necessary  raw  material 
like  cotton,  is  absolutely  excluded,  the  time  will 
come  when  this  fact  will  tell  most  heavily.     If 
the  nonintercourse  had  been  world-organised  the 
effect  would  have  operated  from  the  first.     Inci- 
dentally, of  course,  America  and  England,  be- 
tween them,  control  the  cotton  of  the  world. 

3.  The  effect  of  the  suggested  embargo,  boy- 
cott or  economic  pressure  would  be  most  decisive 
as  a  deterrent  to  aggression,  not  so  much  by  what 
it  might  be  able  to  accomplish  during  a  war  as  by 
what  its  prolongation  would  mean  to  the  aggres- 
sor afterwards. 

For  purposes  of  illustration,  let  us  imagine  the 
method  applied  to  the  case  of  the  present  war. 

In  the  first  chapter  I  have  reproduced  the  terms 
of  a  definite  proposal  for  America's  participation 
in  the  present  conflict,  in  just  that  way  out- 
lined for  the  case  of  those  states  whose  circum- 
stances render  it  unsuitable  for  them  to  take  part 
in  the  military  operations,  but  whose  economic 
co-operation  would  be  valuable.  The  suggestion 
in  question  is  that  America  should  offer  to  settle 
the  whole  contraband  and  blockade  dispute  with 
England  on  the  basis  of  making  international  that 
virtual  control  of  the  overseas  trade  of  the  world 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  325 

which  she  now  exercises.2  America  would  thus 
take  a  definite  part  in  preventing  any  of  her  sup- 
plies reaching  Germany.  The  same  international 
body,  created  for  this  purpose — of  which,  of 
course,  America  would  be  part — would  be  "deal- 
ing with  the  disposal  of  German  property,  in- 
terned ships,  businesses  of  various  kinds,  royal- 
ties on  patents,  bank  balances,  and  so  forth,  and, 
it  may  be,  the  more  remote  arrangements  as  to 
the  future  control  of  German  action  in  the  world : 
tariff  arrangements,  the  conditions  upon  which 
Germany  should  at  the  peace  be  once  more  ad- 
mitted to  the  community  of  nations,  whether  on 
equal  terms  or  not;  whether  the  most  efficient 
means  of  exacting  some  indemnification  for 
damage  done  might  not  be  by  sequestration  of 
German  property  throughout  the  world,  and  pos- 
sibly some  surtax  by  tariff  ship  and  mail  dues,  all, 
of  course,  subject  to  definite  legal  judgment  of 
an  international  court." 

Some  of  the  criticism  provoked  by  this  proposal 
shows  the  extreme  difficulty  of  making  clear  any 
suggestion  which  implies  the  revision,  however 
small,  of  familiar  abstract  conceptions. 

Thus  Professor  Usher  criticises  in  these  terms : 

Under  this  specious  guise  of  an  international  council 
controlling  the  overseas  trade  of  the  world  with  all  coun- 
tries except  Germany,  Mr.  Angell  proposes  to  strip  Eng- 

*See  page  14. 


326  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

land  of  her  control  of  the  seas.  ...  In  return  for  such 
cession  of  England's  present  authority  he  urges  no  quid 
pro  quo  whatever,  and  does  not  even  discuss  the  necessity 
of  granting  one  to  secure  the  cessation  itself.  .  .  .  But 
does  not  this  scheme  require  England  to  cede  to  others 
that  very  control  of  the  seas  which  she  regards  as  the 
foundation  of  her  national  independence?  Is  it  not  this 
the  control  at  which  the  German  fleet  is  aimed  and  which 
every  effort  of  England  has  been  made  to  insure  beyond 
peradventure  ?  Must  not  its  loss  seem  to  Englishmen  the 
very  greatest  possible  blow  (short  of  invasion)  which  a 
crushing  defeat  of  the  Allies  by  Germany  might  deal 
them  ?  Moreover,  is  not  this  arbitrary  exercise  of  author- 
ity by  England,  of  which  Mr.  Angell  writes,  the  very 
right  which  the  English  are  supremely  anxious  to  pre- 
serve? How,  too,  can  it  really  be  transferred  to  others 
while  the  English  fleet  outnumbers  the  fleets  of  its  allies 
and  all  neutrals  combined? 

I  cannot  believe  that  such  a  council  would  do  more 
than  .  .  .  reveal  in  all  their  nakedness  the  fundamental 
difficulties  which  now  hold  nations  apart.  These  lie  in 
the  fact  that  England  does  have  control  of  the  seas  and 
that  all  other  nations  have  something  to  gain  from  taking 
it  away  from  her,  and  per  contra  that  England  has  every- 
thing to  lose  by  allowing  them  to  do  it;  that  nearly  all 
neutral  states,  the  United  States  in  particular,  are  depen- 
dent upon  the  English  merchant  marine,  English  ex- 
change, English  insurance,  for  economic  contact  with 
three- fourths  of  the  globe;  that  the  geologic  contour  of 
the  European  coast,  the  ocean  currents,  and  the  position 
of  the  British  Isles  compel  the  commerce  of  the  world 
with  northern  Europe  to  pass  through  the  English 
Channel  which  England's  harbours,  for  the  same  geologic 
reasons,  control. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  327 

To  that  criticism  I  replied  as  follows: 

One  rubs  one's  eyes. 

Here  are  Great  Britain  and  her  allies,  by 
their  own  repeated  avowal,  in  an  all  but 
desperate  position.  They  have  again  and 
again  declared  that  their  very  existence  is 
threatened;  they  are  at  this  moment  strain- 
ing every  nerve  to  secure  the  help  of  even 
minor  Balkan  states,  not  a  few  military 
critics  declaring  that  the  outcome  of  the  war 
will  depend  upon  the  action  of  those  states. 
However  that  may  be,  however  slim  the 
chance,  that  is,  that  Germany  is  likely  to 
overcome  the  Western  Allies,  there  is  no 
visible  prospect  of  their  achieving  what  we 
have  so  often  been  told  is  the  real  object  of 
the  war:  such  a  conquest  of  Germany  as  to 
reduce  her  military  power  to  impotence  and 
make  it  impossible  for  her  ambitions  ever 
again  to  disturb  the  world.  If  that,  or  any- 
thing resembling  it,  is  ever  to  be  achieved  by 
the  method  that  the  Allies  are  now  employ- 
ing, it  will  mean  a  long  drain  upon  resources 
that  are  already  strained — as  the  present  very 
serious  credit  difficulties  of  Great  Britain 
show — resources  which,  without  the  United 
States  to  draw  upon,  would  be  obviously  un- 
equal to  the  task. 

The  proposal  under  discussion  is  that  at 
this  very  critical  juncture  the  United  States 
should  intervene  and  say  to  Great  Britain: 
In  order  to  secure  a  more  effective  co-opera- 
tion of  the  world  against  a  common  menace, 


328  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

we  will  not  only  sacrifice  what  we  believe  to 
be  our  rights  to  very  valuable  trade  with 
neutrals  and  with  Germany,  which,  if  insisted 
upon,  would  greatly  add  to  the  difficulty  of 
your  task;  but  we  will  also  make  arrange- 
ments concerning  our  trade  and  finance  in 
the  future  which  may  render  possible  what 
your  unaided  efforts  seem  unlikely  to  accom- 
plish, namely,  the  removal  of  a  menace  which 
you  say  threatens  your  existence.  Such  co- 
operation on  our  part  involves,  in  fact,  plac- 
ing our  national  resources  at  your  disposal 
for  your  present  purpose  and  may  involve 
on  America's  part  great  sacrifices  of  trade 
and  profit  over  very  long  periods ;  this  sacri- 
fice will  be  obviously  a  valuable,  possibly  a 
vital  contribution  to  the  achievement  of  your 
ultimate  purpose,  which  from  the  first  you 
have  declared  to  be  essential  to  your  con- 
tinued national  existence. 

And  this,  says  Professor  Usher,  is  no 
service  at  all  on  America's  part,  "no  quid  pro 
quo  whatever"! 

In  submitting  my  proposal  I  made  an 
assumption  which  I  believe  most  Englishmen 
would  make,  namely,  that  "control  of  the 
sea"  is  something  which  England  exercises, 
not  for  the  purpose  of  imposing  her  domina- 
tion, political  or  commercial,  upon  the  world, 
but  for  securing  England's  safety  (which 
they  believe  in  the  present  circumstances  in- 
volves the  defeat  of  Germany)  and  the  vindi- 
cation of  what  Mr.  Asquith  has  called  "the 
public  right  of  Europe."  If  the  civilized 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  329 

world  will  make  common  cause  with  her  in 
those  objects,  associating  itself  with  her  for 
the  purpose  of  rendering  more  effective  that 
isolation  of  Germany  she  is  attempting  to 
achieve  by  her  sea  power;  and,  if  the  neces- 
sity of  defeating  Prussian  military  aggres- 
sion should  demand  it,  for  the  purpose  also 
of  completing  and  prolonging  that  isolation 
to  a  degree  and  in  a  way  which  her  unaided 
sea  domination  could  never  do,  why,  in  the 
name  of  all  the  professions  with  which  she 
entered  this  war,  should  England  object? 
Professor  Usher  seems  to  write  as  though 
the  plan  involved  some  surrender  of  Eng- 
land's power  to  her  enemies;  but  it  means 
increasing  that  power  over  her  enemies  by 
the  addition  of  an  economic  ally  and  the  pro- 
longation into  the  post  bellum  period,  by  the 
consent  of  her  allies,  of  blockade  arrange- 
ments, their  transformation  into  an  organ- 
ised embargo.  What  Professor  Usher 
suggests  is  that  when  virtually  the  whole 
non-German  world  is  prepared  to  tax  its  re- 
sources for  the  purpose  of  waging  more 
effectively  a  war  against  a  common  enemy, 
England  will  stand  out  for  controlling  the 
employment  of  that  instrument,  not  for  the 
common  purpose,  but  for  her  own  advantage 
as  against  that  of  her  allies.  I  do  not  believe 
that  she  could  if  she  would,  or  would  if  she 
could.  For,  while  it  is  true  that  England's 
allies  and  the  United  States  may  be  depen- 
dent upon  her  in  the  way  Professor  Usher 
suggests,  it  is  also  true  that  England  is  very 


330  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

much  dependent  financially  and  industrially 
just  at  present  upon  the  United  States — a 
circumstance  which  Professor  Usher's  sur- 
vey of  the  factors  does  not  include.  When 
he  tells  us  that  international  co-operation  of 
this  kind  is  impossible  because  England 
would  be  in  a  position  to  defy  the  decision  of 
her  partners  by  virtue  of  her  preponderant 
sea  power,  he  surely  overlooks  the  fact  that 
those  partners,  notably  the  United  States, 
have  the  disposal  of  things — ammunition, 
food  supplies,  money — essential  to  rendering 
even  sea  power  effective.  The  real  situation 
is  one  of  interdependence  with  the  balance 
as  between  England  and  the  United  States 
tilted  rather  remarkably  just  now  against 
Great  Britain. 

Professor  Usher's  criticism  moreover 
seems  to  overlook  the  fact  that  if  America 
joins  the  Allies  in  the  ordinary  way  all  the 
arrangements  I  have  indicated  will  go  into 
effect  automatically  during  the  period  of  the 
war.  America  in  a  state  of  war  will  take 
her  own  precautions  to  see  that  supplies, 
whether  of  cotton  or  of  anything  else,  do  not 
reach  Germany;  this  country  will  also  pre- 
sumably enter  into  some  sort  of  consultation 
with  her  allies  as  to  the  most  effective  form 
of  her  co-operation  in  the  war  that  they 
would  be  waging  in  common :  whether,  for 
instance,  her  energies  should  go  mainly  into 
the  furnishing  of  supplies,  ammunition, 
money,  etc.  This  country  would  have  to 
decide  what  proportion  of  the  output  of 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  331 

munitions  and  supplies  would  be  needed  for 
her  own  military  purposes,  and  that  would 
involve  the  control  of  exports.  Obviously 
there  can  be  no  real  and  effective  division  of 
labor  between  the  Allies  in  these  circum- 
stances without  consultation  and  agreement 
as  to  such  matters,  and  as  to  others  like  the 
furnishing  of  supplies  to  neutrals.  Would 
England  still  insist  that  her  allies  had  no 
part  in  controlling  those  arrangements,  and 
that  such  control  must  remain  a  prerogative 
of  her  absolute  dictation  secured  through  sea 
power  ?  In  short,  would  not  the  mere  fact  of 
America's  joining  the  Allies  bring  about  just 
those  international  arrangements  concerning 
the  destination  of  American  supplies,  etc., 
which  in  effect  mean  the  internationalisation 
of  sea  control? 

What  my  suggestion  amounted  to  was 
this:  that  since  internationalisation  of  sea 
control  would  be  inevitable  during  the  period 
of  the  war  anyhow,  if  America  became  one 
of  the  combatants,  this  country  could  secure 
England's  co-operation  in  a  plan  which  may 
give  the  nations  as  a  whole,  not  merely  for 
the  purposes  of  the  present  war  but  per- 
manently, an  instrument  more  effective 
than  military  force,  exercised  as  it  has  been 
in  the  past,  seems  to  be  in  restraining  a 
recalcitrant  member. 

England's  co-operation  therein  would  in 
no  wise  weaken  British  sea  power  as  a  de- 
fensive instrument,  for  a  condition  of  its 
internationalisation  would  be  the  co-opera- 


332  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

tion  of  all  of  those  who  shared  its  control 
in  British  defence.  The  world  as  a  whole 
under  such  an  arrangement  would  stand  for 
British  integrity  as  much  as  it  would  stand 
for  Belgian,  and  if  the  plan  is  workable  at 
all  British  security  would  gain  and  not  lose. 
What  Professor  Usher's  objection  comes 
to  is  that  England  desires  to  retain  her  con- 
trol of  the  seas,  not  as  a  defensive  instru- 
ment, but  as  one  for  securing  special  ad- 
vantage over  other  nations.  To  which  I 
would  reply  that  it  cannot  in  practice  be  so 
used ;  and  that  if  it  could,  and  England  does 
so  attempt  to  use  it  to  the  disadvantage  of 
others,  she  is  destined  one  day  to  occupy  the 
position  that  Germany  does  to-day.  Rather 
than  that,  I  believe  that  Englishmen  as  a 
whole  would,  if  the  facts  were  clear,  infinitely 
prefer  some  such  international  arrangement 
as  the  one  I  have  indicated. 

I  will  deal  with  certain  other  criticisms  and 
objections  later,  but  in  order  to  see  clearly 
just  how  the  proposed  internationalisation  of 
trade  control  might  be  applied  to  the  problems 
created  by  the  war  let  us  assume  that  the  Allies 
have  been  only  so  far  successful  as  to  stop  the  Ger- 
man offensive ;  that,  in  other  words,  it  had  become 
plain,  even  to  the  Germans  themselves,  that  they 
could  not  possibly  break  through  the  Allies'  lines. 

On  the  assumption  that  the  German  offensive 
has  been  stopped,  here  is  something,  at  least,  with 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  333 

which  the  world  could  bargain.  For,  if,  as  pointed 
out  in  the  proposal  I  have  cited,  we  can  assume 
the  international  control  of  the  world's  wealth 
having  gone  on  for  some  time,  "there  would  be  a 
situation  in  which  the  channels  of  trade  would 
for  prolonged  periods  have  been  turned  away 
from  Germany,  while  the  needs  of  war  would 
have  engendered  between  Germany's  enemies 
much  mutual  helpfulness  in  the  way  of  loans, 
credit  arrangements,  etc.,  with  their  resources 
organised  and  their  action  co-ordinated  by  cen- 
tral international  organisation."  The  Allies 
in  these  circumstances  would  be  in  a  position 
to  notify  Germany  that,  whether  the  military 
operations  of  the  Allies  compelled  the  evacua- 
tion of  Belgium  or  not,  German  property 
throughout  the  world — ships  in  port,  royalties  on 
patents,  all  other  debts  due  to  German  citizens — 
would  be  sequestrated  and,  under  order  of  court, 
ultimately  realised  and  the  proceeds  paid  into  a 
central  war  indemnification  fund  for  the  relief 
of  those  who  had  suffered  by  Germany's 
aggression. 

They  would  also  be  in  a  position  to  notify 
her  that,  failing  the  fulfilment  of  certain  con- 
ditions, the  world  would  be  closed  to  her  after 
the  war  for  a  period  of  years,  that  period  to 
be  succeeded  by  one  in  which,  though  inter- 
course might  be  established  partially,  a  sur- 


334  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

tax  would  be  imposed  on  all  tolls  or  dues  paid 
for  mail,  cables,  harbor  charges,  and  so  on, 
by  Germany  throughout  the  world,  such  surtax 
also  to  be  paid  into  the  same  indemnification  fund. 

Such  a  situation  does  not  imply  an  overwhelm- 
ing victory  on  the  part  of  the  Allies.  From  the 
moment  that  Germany  obviously  cannot  break 
through  the  Allied  line  the  Allies  would  be  in  a 
position  to  put  such  a  threat  into  execution. 

But  it  is,  of  course,  mainly  as  a  deterrent  in 
the  formulation  of  future  policies  on  the  part  of 
would-be  aggressors  that  some  such  method 
would  be  valuable:  when  the  nations  come 
to  discuss  the  future  at  the  end  of  this  present 
war.  Whether  such  a  method  could  play  much 
part  or  not  as  an  instrument  of  bargaining  in  the 
existing  settlement  it  could  certainly  play  a  large 
part  in  determining  the  future  course  of  nations 
likely  to  be  bitten  with  military  ambition. 

If  Germany  had  known,  during  the  last  decade 
or  two,  when  Pan-Germanism  and  culture- 
spreading  had  taken  its  most  dangerous  form, 
that  the  result  of  military  aggression  would  be 
to  close  the  world  to  German  influence,  would 
aggression  have  become  a  popular  policy? — al- 
ways assuming  for  the  sake  of  the  argument  that 
Germany  is  the  aggressor.  Would  not  the  pros- 
pect of  such  a  penalty  on  aggression  reverse  and 
neutralise  the  motives  that  provoke  aggression? 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  335 

If  the  center  of  militarism  and  unrest  in  Europe 
has  been  in  Germany,  certainly  that  unrest  had  its 
origin  in  the  German  desire  for  national  self- 
expression,  for  expansion,  for  the  imposition  of 
German  influence  on  the  world.  But  if  it  had  been 
known  that  the  fact  of  using  Germany's  military 
machine  in  defiance  of  the  common  will  of  Chris- 
tendom implied  the  closing  of  the  outside  world  to 
her  trade,  her  communications,  the  travel  of  her 
people,  the  dissemination  of  her  literature,  the 
distribution  of  her  products,  would  not  Germans, 
inspired  by  dreams  of  German  domination,  have 
been  likely  to  consider  whether  German  influ- 
ence would  not  have  a  greater  chance  of  free 
play  by  peaceful  methods  than  by  military  aggres- 
sion? 

Imagine  the  world  absolutely  closed  to  Ger- 
many, her  trade  shut  out,  all  communication 
with  her  cut  off,  for  a  period  of  ten  years! 
(That  is  the  case  now,  remember,  with  four- 
fifths  of  Europe,  and  will  be  the  case  with 
America  if  this  country  goes  to  war.)  How 
would  German  influence,  whether  commercial, 
intellectual,  or  political,  stand  at  the  end  of 
that  period  ?  In  any  case  it  would  not  be  a  condi- 
tion that  the  Pan-Germanist  or  Imperialist  would 
desire  as  likely  to  advance  his  dreams.  There 
is  at  least  a  chance  that  even  he  would  decide,  on 
the  strength  of  evidence  now  available,  that  Ger- 


336  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

manism  stood  a  greater  chance  of  survival 
through  peaceful  penetration  than  through  mili- 
tary means.  Had  he  to  choose  between  reduction 
of  armaments — coupled,  of  course,  with  some 
guarantee  against  attack  by  other  states — plus  an 
open  field  in  the  world  at  large  on  one  hand,  and 
continued  armaments  and  a  closed  world  on  the 
other,  even  he  would  be  likely  to  choose  the 
former. 

As  to  certain  obvious  objections.  We  will  first 
take  the  suppositious  case  of  American  action 
against  Germany  already  described. 

It  will  be  said  that  by  such  action  America 
would  have  sacrificed  her  neutrality  and  created  a 
state  of  war  with  Germany.  Of  course,  and  if 
Germany  cared  to  avail  herself  of  existing  inter- 
national law  to  insist  on  that  point,  it  would  sim- 
plify America's  action.  But .  it  would  be  an 
academic  point  raised  by  Germany.  She  could 
hardly  oblige  America  to  send  troops  to  Europe 
to  fight  German  troops  and,  just  for  the  moment, 
she  is  not  in  a  position  to  send  troops  here.  The 
meaning  which  America  gives  to  a  "state  of  war" 
is  in  the  supposed  circumstances  mainly  Amer- 
ica's affair ;  and  if  she  cares  to  put  the  emphasis 
of  her  effort  upon  the  development  of  other  than 
military  forces,  how  can  Germany  prevent  that? 
And  why  should  America  worry  as  to  the  precise 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  337 

meaning  which  Germany  might  attach  to  "a  state 
of  war"  in  the  assumed  circumstances? 

The  situation  of  a  state  like  Holland  would,  of 
course,  be  very  different.  But  it  should  be  noted 
that  Britain  is  managing  to  obtain  by  the  private 
co-operation  of  Dutch  merchants  pretty  much  the 
situation  which  would  exist  if  Dutch  neutrality 
had  been  abolished  in  the  fashion  contemplated  in 
the  project  under  discussion.  The  Dutch  mer- 
chants have  established  a  commission — The 
Netherlands  Overseas  Trust — the  scope  of  whose 
operations  may  be  gathered  from  the  notifica- 
tion issued  from  Washington3  to  the  following 
effect : 

Further  restrictions  on  commerce  -to  Holland  are  re- 
ported to  the  Department  of  Commerce  by  Commercial 
Attache  Erwin  W.  Thompson,  assigned  to  Berlin,  but 
temporarily  handling  United  States  commercial  interests 
at  The  Hague. 

Mr.  Thompson  cables  that  the  Overseas  Trust,  which 
handles  all  imports  into  the  Netherlands  under  an  agree- 
ment with  Great  Britain  that  none  of  the  goods  will 
reach  Germany,  had  decided  to  issue  licenses  only  to 
importers  able  to  satisfy  the  trust  that  former  consign- 
ments had  been  consumed  in  Holland.  Only  shipments 
consigned  to  the  Overseas  Trust  are  allowed  to  pass 
unmolested  by  Great  Britain. 

Dutch  importers  will  be  required  hereafter  to  dispose 
of  their  goods  under  the  immediate  supervision  of  the 

'August  13. 


338  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Overseas  Trust,  which  has  formed  a  new  committee  for 
the  purpose. 

Mr.  Thompson  advises  the  department  of  an  opening 
for  American  coal  in  the  Netherlands  market.  Hereto- 
fore no  coal  from  abroad  has  been  allowed  to  enter 
Holland,  but  agitation  resulting  from  a  shortage  of  fuel 
has  influenced  the  Overseas  Trust  to  issue  important 
licenses  for  the  American  product.4 

4Some  of  the  effects  of  these  measures  are  dealt  with  by  the 
Saturday  Evening  Post  in  the  following  paragraph : 

"Recently  rates  for  marine  insurance  on  shipments  in  neutral 
vessels  from  the  United  States  to  Scandinavian  ports — except 
Stockholm — were  advanced  to  seven  per  cent ;  while  to  Stockholm 
the  rate  was  fixed  at  ten  per  cent.  These  are  the  rates  the 
shipper  paid  when  he  declared  neutral  ownership  and  neutral 
destination  of  the  cargo.  At  the  same  time  the  rate  of  insurance 
on  shipments  in  neutral  vessels  from  the  United  States  to 
Holland — neutral  ownership  and  destination  being  declared — 
was  one  and  a  half  per  cent. 

"The  reason  for  this  extraordinary  difference  was  that  Dutch 
shipping  interests  had  combined  in  the  Netherlands  Overseas 
Trust  and  given  guaranties — satisfactory  to  Great  Britain — that 
no  goods  shipped  into  Holland  should  find  their  way  to  Germany. 
The  Overseas  Trust  gives  licenses,  under  strict  regulations,  to 
Dutch  importers,  who  must  prove  that  the  goods  do  not  reach 
Germany.  When  the  insurance  rates  were  advanced  Scandi- 
navian countries  had  not  made  arrangements  which  assured  to 
England's  satisfaction  that  goods  billed  to  their  ports  would  not 
reach  Germany.  Hence,  England  was  seizing  the  shipments; 
hence,  the  nearly  prohibitive  insurance  rates. 

"Small  neutral  states  are  free  to  use  the  sea  just  in  propor- 
tion as  they  meet  Britannia's  requirements.  In  wartime  'free- 
dom of  the  seas'  is  largely  a  figure  of  speech." 

Measures  of  a  much  more  coercive  kind  are 
applied  by  Great  Britain  to  control  American 
trade  in  such  a  way  as  to  serve  her  military  ends. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  339 

They  are  revealed  in  great  detail  in  the  New 
York  " World"  (which  speaks  of  them  as  "Brit- 
ain's Blockade  of  America")  in  its  issues  of 
September  20-21.  It  summarises  their  nature 
thus : 

The  procedure  is  simple.  When  an  American  industry 
is  dependent  on  raw  material  coming  from  any  part  of 
the  British  Empire,  that  industry  is  compelled,  at  the 
cost  of  a  famine  in  raw  material,  to  sign  agreements 
restricting  its  sales  at  home  and  confining  its  exports  to 
England  or  her  allies  in  the  war.  In  the  case  of  cotton, 
which  is  beyond  British  control,  a  blacklist  of  offending 
American  dealers  serves  the  same  purpose. 

This  is  an  attempt  to  extend  the  British  blockade  of 
Germany  along  a  line  reaching  out  around  the  world. 
It  is  an  effort  to  "collect"  on  the  blockade  not  within  the 
war  area  but  "at  the  source,"  through  a  virtual  invasion 
of  neutral  America,  thousands  of  miles  from,  the  scene. 
It  is  either  an  admission  that  Britain  is  not  powerful 
enough  at  sea  in  this  war  to  administer  an  effective  and 
legitimate  blockade,  or  it  is  an  undertaking  to  prevent 
America  from  gaining  any  advantages  out  of  the  war  as 
against  England  in  trade  with  neutral  markets. 

The  first  of  these  alternative  conclusions  makes  a 
sorry  comment  on  British  naval  efficiency.  The  second 
reads  badly  at  a  time  when  British  financial  agents  are 
combing  the  country  for  the  means  with  which  to  buy 
goods  in  a  market  their  Government  is  trying  to  hold 
down. 

These  blacklisting  and  blackjacking  efforts  are  con- 
ducted through  individuals  and  associations,  many  of 
them  in  the  United  States.  They  are  glaringly  in  re- 


340  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

straint  of  the  domestic  and  foreign  trade  of  the  United 
States.  We  have  a  law  clearly  applying  criminally  or 
civilly  to  such  cases.  Let  that  law  be  enforced.5 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  American 
State  Department,  far  from  taking  any  such  ac- 
tion, in  a  sense  recognises,  if  not  the  legality,  at 
least  the  inevitability  of  measures  like  these. 
Professor  Clapp  points  out  that  though  the 
United  States  government  had  taken  the  view 
that  the  stoppage  of  German  exports  to  America 
was  illegal,  two  officials  of  the  State  Department 
were  deputed  to  act  as  representatives  of  Amer- 
ican shippers  in  presenting  to  the  British  embassy 
at  Washington  proofs  that  their  desired  imports 
from  Germany  had  been  paid  for  before  March. 
As  he  points  out,  the  situation  would  have  been 
paralleled  with  regard  to  Germany  if,  after  pro- 
testing against  the  sinking  of  passenger  vessels 
with  Americans  aboard,  the  American  govern- 
ment had  appointed  two  Foreign  Travel  advisers 
attached  to  the  State  Department,  whose  func- 
tions would  have  been  to  inform  prospective 
travelers  what  ships  the  German  Ambassador,  on 
behalf  of  his  government,  would  agree  not  to 
torpedo. 

"For  further  details  of  the  fashion  in  which  Britain  thus 
secures  discrimination  against  Germany  by  neutrals,  see  Pro- 
fessor E.  J.  Clapp's  interesting  work :  "The  Economic  Aspects 
of  the  War"  (Yale  University  Press),  pp.  252-6. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  341 

Now,  if  such  a  situation  is  possible  at  all  under 
international  law,  that  law  will  not  require  much 
stretching  either  in  fact  or  in  abstract  conception 
to  include  a  general  subscription  to  the  rule  which 
would,  of  course,  be  a  necessary  part  of  any  plan 
of  international  sanction  by  economic  pressure. 
That  rule,  which  would  have  to  secure  general 
assent  at  the  forthcoming  European  settlement  if 
any  such  plan  as  that  here  discussed  is  to  become 
part  of  such  settlement,  would  be  of  some  such 
nature  as  that  indicated  by  the  following  clause 
of  a  suggested  arrangement : 

When  any  sanction  or  other  measure  or- 
dered by  the  Court  (Council)  is  directed  to 
be  put  in  operation  against  any  Constituent 
State,  it  shall  be  an  offence  against  the  comity 
of  nations  for  the  State  against  which  such 
decree,  decision,  injunction  or  execution  is 
ordered,  or  against  which  any  sanction  or 
other  measure  is  directed  to  be  enforced,  to 
declare  war  or  to  make  any  naval  or  military 
action,  or  to  violate  the  territory  or  attack 
the  ships  of  any  other  State  or  to  commit  any 
other  act  of  aggression  against  any  or  all  of 
the  States  so  acting  under  the  order  of  the 
court;  and  all  the  other  Constituent  States 
shall  be  bound,  and  do  hereby  pledge  them- 
selves to  make  common  cause  with  the  State 
or  States  so  attacked.6 

'From  a  plan  outlined  by  the  Fabian  Society  in  July,  1915. 


342  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

It  will  be  said,  of  course,  that  a  state  which 
has  challenged  the  other  constituent  states  by 
refusing  to  submit  its  difference  to  enquiry  is 
certainly  not  likely  to  be  restrained  from  aggres- 
sion by  the  mere  fact  that  such  aggression  is 
proclaimed  "an  offence  against  the  comity  of 
nations."  But  there  is  nothing  now  save  its  own 
caution  that  prevents  any  one  nation  from  issuing 
declarations  of  war  to  the  whole  world  at  the 
same  time.  We  may  assume  that  a  nation  placed 
in  a  state  of  nonintercourse  with  the  world  would 
not  gratuitously  add  to  the  not  trifling  difficulties 
of  this  situation  by  insisting  that  every  party  to  it 
must  fight  it  by  its  armies  and  navies  as  well  as 
by  its  economic  forces. 

This  point  is  important,  because  the  first 
natural  criticism  provoked  by  the  proposal  is  that 
the  acts  necessary  to  create  a  state  of  noninter- 
course are  tantamount  to  a  state  of  war,  which 
calls  on  a  nation  to  move  its  troops  or  its  battle- 
ships. 

So,  under  existing  precedent  and  conceptions, 
it  does;  but  with  new  methods  and  new  concep- 
tions would  come  new  precedents  and  a  new 
meaning  to  "a  state  of  war."  If  a  nation  cares  to 
assume  that  it  has  received  a  declaration  of  war 
from  the  world,  it  can,  of  course,  if  it  deems 
its  dignity  demands  it,  move  its  troops  against  the 
planet  as  a  whole. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  343 

As  a  matter  of  military  fact,  of  course,  it  could 
do  nothing  of  the  kind.  It  would  have  to  choose, 
to  say  the  least,  which  part  of  the  world  it  would 
attack  first;  and  would  desire,  if  it  could,  while 
dealing  with  one  particular  nation,  to  be  free 
from  attack  by  the  others. 

So  there  is  not  necessarily  any  more  likelihood 
than  at  present  of  a  minor  state — like,  say,  Spain 
or  Sweden — finding  itself  suddenly  involved  in 
military  operations.  We  know  unhappily  that 
such  a  risk  exists  now  for  a  small  state,  even 
when  it  is  not  a  party  to  such  an  arrangement  as 
that  which  we  have  in  mind.  Belgium  and  Lux- 
emburg show  us  that  little  states,  obviously  inno- 
cent of  any  intention  or  possibility  of  aggression, 
may  now  become  the  victims,  merely  by  reason 
of  their  position,  of  the  military  quarrels  of 
larger  neighbours. 

This  much  is  certain — that,  confronted  by  an 
organized  group  of  nations  representing  in  fact 
the  outside  world  determined  to  enforce  a  boy- 
cott, Germany  could  not  challenge  all  at  once 
and  compel  by  military  means  all,  at  one  and  the 
same  time,  to  admit  her  ships  and  facilitate  her 
trade.  She  would  have  to  begin  with  at  most 
one  or  two  and  concentrate  her  military  effort  on 
them,  and  in  order  to  be  successful  would  have  to 
secure  some  sort  of  peace  or  understanding  with 
the  others, 


344  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

"It  is  too  complicated  to  be  effective,  and  likely 
to  hurt  us  as  much  as  our  enemy." 

Well,  I  think  most  men  of  affairs  would  have 
argued  that  way  a  year  ago ;  but  the  experience  of 
the  present  war  shows  that  centralised  action, 
like  that  of  a  great  state,  or,  better  still,  of  a 
group  of  states,  utilising  the  devices  of  the 
modern  world — instantaneous  communication 
with  all  parts  of  it,  and  so  on — can  co-ordinate 
the  immense  economic  forces  of  our  commercial 
and  industrial  civilisation  far  more  effectively 
than  most  of  us  a  year  ago  believed  to  be  pos- 
sible. 

In  the  first  days  of  August  both  Great  Britain 
and  Germany  were  confronted  with  the  need  of 
redirecting  the  currents  of  trade  and  intercourse 
of  all  kinds.  Intercourse  between  two  great 
groups — the  British  and  the  German  Empires — 
had  been  suddenly  severed,  and  very  many 
thought  that  the  disorganisation  so  created 
would  produce  catastrophic  effects  paralysing 
both — incidentally  the  present  writer  did  not 
take  and  never  had  taken  that  view.  The 
respective  governments,  however,  immediately 
used  the  national  resources  at  their  disposal  to 
rearrange  the  fabric  of  credit  and  trade.  The 
British,  for  instance,  guaranteed  commercial 
paper  and  the  collection  of  certain  foreign  debts. 
It  practically  took  over  marine  insurance.  It 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  345 

even  took  charge  of  certain  industries  and  became 
the  distributor  of  certain  raw  materials. 

Very  much  to  the  astonishment  even  of  those 
who  had  the  arrangements  in  hand,  it  was  found 
that  a  great  centralised  government  could  effec- 
tively exercise  the  necessary  control  over  very 
great  areas,  stretching,  in  the  case  of  the  British 
Empire,  from  Calcutta  to  London,  from  Cape 
Town  to  Vancouver,  and  from  Montreal  to 
Sydney;  and  in  a  few  days  make  such  readjust- 
ments as  would  enable  life  in  these  immense  areas 
to  go  on  with  relatively  small  disturbance. 

The  experiment  proved  two  things :  First,  that 
nonintercourse  can  in  large  degree  be  very 
quickly  established;  and,  second,  that  its  effects 
can  be  controlled — that  they  can  be  prevented, 
for  instance,  from  falling  unduly  on  one  class 
or  section. 

Now  we  may  urge  that  this  proves  too  much, 
since  it  proves  that  a  nation  like  Germany  can 
escape  in  large  part  the  damage  resulting  from 
being  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world.  That 
point  I  have  already  dealt  with.  In  the  long  run 
she  cannot  stand  it  and  maintain  her  position  of 
dominance.  The  rest  of  the  world — those  enforc- 
ing it — can  stand  it  much  better,  for  the  following 
reasons : 

Every  League  of  Peace — every  combination 
for  the  restraint  of  disorder — assumes  that  the 


346  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

lawbreakers  will  be  in  a  minority;  that  those 
coercing  outnumber  those  to  be  coerced;  and, 
though  this  method,  like  all  methods  of  restraint 
— police  and  courts  and  prisons  within  the  state 
cost  money — involves  sacrifice  on  the  part  of  the 
majority  enforcing  it,  it  is  to  them  less  burden- 
some because  shared  by  a  greater  number. 

In  other  words,  the  states  enforcing  noninter- 
course  are  still  free  to  maintain  their  communi- 
cation with  one  another  and  so  to  readjust  their 
social,  commercial,  and  industrial  life  more  easily 
and  to  greater  advantage,  because  operating  over 
a  larger  area,  than  is  possible  within  the  nar- 
rower limits  of  the  embargoed  nation. 

"Embargoes  of  the  past  have  not  been  effec- 
tive." 

This  objection  generally  is  based  on  the  ill 
working  of  the  Continental  decrees  of  Napoleon 
and  his  rivals  and  the  futility  of  our  own  decrees 
of  "nonintercourse"  during  that  period. 

But  I  can  hardly  imagine  anyone  quoting  that 
with  any  vivid  realisation  of  the  difference,  not 
only  in  extent  of  international  commerce,  but  in 
the  dependence  of  a  civilised  people  in  normal 
times  upon  international  intercourse.  So  far,  of 
course,  as  the  American  nonintercourse  procla- 
mations were  concerned,  they  were  not  the  act 
of  a  worldwide  group  of  powers,  but  of  what 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  347 

was  at  the  time  a  feeble,  distant,  and  undeveloped 
outpost  of  civilisation.  Embargoes  in  those  days 
were  enforced  by  sailing  ship  navies  and  so 
loosely  applied  that  smuggling  became  at  times 
as  considerable  an  industry  as  the  commerce 
which  the  embargoes  aimed  to  destroy  had  been. 
Every  feature  of  the  conditions  of  the  continental 
embargoes  is  as  obsolete  as  the  old  smuggler  who 
formed  a  part  of  them.  If,  in  those  days,  bad 
weather  or  other  causes  completely  severed  the 
new  world  from  the  old  for  three  or  four  months 
— if  it  took,  that  is,  that  period  to  communicate 
with  Europe  and  get  a  reply,  which  it  frequently 
did — there  was  no  particular  disturbance  of  life 
on  either  continent.  But  if  one  could  imagine 
such  cessation  of  communication  to-day,  immense 
industries,  involving  millions  of  persons,  would 
be  vitally  affected.  I  have  already  touched  upon 
the  deceptiveness  of  that  appearance  of  self- 
sufficingness  which  war  conditions  have  given  to 
Germany.  She  could,  of  course,  live  in  a  physical 
sense ;  but  the  cost  that  she  would  pay  for  sever- 
ance from  civilisation — the  scientific  and  intel- 
lectual as  well  as  the  economic  which  her  people 
would  thoroughly  well  realise — would  be  enor- 
mous. 

She  can,  undoubtedly,  be  self-sufficing  as  a 
military  measure  for  a  time,  a  year  or  two  it  may 
be,  but  a  country  cut  off  from  cotton,  rubber, 


348  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

coffee,  tropical  drugs,  to  mention  but  a  few 
things ;  hardly  able  to  communicate  with  the  out- 
side world,  whose  citizens  cannot  travel  abroad, 
is  not  a  comfortable  country,  to  say  the  least, 
and  not  one  that  could  very  long  keep  up  the 
pretension  of  "world  domination."  The  whole 
philosophy  of  "world  domination,"  world  leader- 
ship, "saviourship  of  civilisation,"  and  all  the 
phrases  which  feed  national  vanity  and  the 
disastrous  policy  it  promotes,  would  become 
ludicrous  in  the  case  of  a  people  so  situated. 
From  the  moment  that  it  is  no  longer  covered 
with  the  glamour  of  military  heroism;  so  soon 
as  it  becomes,  not  a  matter  of  glorious  battles,  but 
inglorious  isolation  from  civilised  intercourse, 
the  psychological  roots  of  sentimental  Imperial- 
ism are  cut  away. 

*     * 

This  psychological  difference  from  methods  of 
war  is  an  important  one.  If  someone  with  whom 
you  maintain  ordinary  relations  quarrels  with 
you  over  a  dispute,  and,  by  way  of  enforcing 
his  view  of  it,  strikes  you,  you  don't  argue  about 
the  merits  of  your  difference,  you  strike  back 
and  you  have  no  desire  whatever  to  know  his 
view:  your  only  desire  is  to  hurt  him.  And  the 
more  he  proclaims  his  intention  of  showing  you 
he  is  the  better  man  and  parades  his  fighting 
capacity  generally,  the  more  you  are  determined 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  349 

not  to  be  humiliated  in  that  fashion.  The  merits 
of  the  dispute  itself  soon  disappear,  and  it  is  the 
circumstances  of  the  fight  that  concern  both  par- 
ties. Neither  has  any  sense  of  moral  obloquy, 
and  the  longer  the  fight  goes  on  and  the  more 
its  origins  are  forgotten  and  the  more  bitter  it 
becomes,  the  more  do  both  feel  justified  in  carry- 
ing it  "to  an  honourable  conclusion." 

But  the  case  is  different,  if,  as  the  result  of 
your  conduct,  one  of  your  friends  simply  ceases 
business  and  personal  relations  with  you;  and, 
still  more,  if  he  is  joined  in  this  attitude  by  the 
community  in  which  you  live.  If  you  have 
honestly  taken  the  view  that  your  conduct  has 
been  right,  you  are  much  more  likely  to  put  to 
yourself  the  other  man's  view  than  in  the  cir- 
cumstances when  he  opened  negotiations  with  a 
blow.  And  though  parallels  between  individuals 
and  nations  are  generally  false,  there  is  enough 
of  validity  in  the  analogy  here  to  justify  the  hope 
that  a  prolonged  condition  of  nonintercourse,  in- 
glorious and  tiresome,  would  not  set  up  quite  that 
condition  of  patriotic  blindness  to  any  side  of 
the  case  other  than  that  of  one's  country,  that  a 
war  does. 

And  it  should  be  noted  that  the  essentials  of 
this  proposal  are  entirely  in  keeping  with  the 
evolution  of  police  processes  in  society  generally. 


350  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Only  in  the  very  crudest  forms  of  society  are  its 
members  compelled  to  make  their  contribution  to 
the  enforcement  of  the  common  will  by  sharing 
in  the  act  of  physical  compulsion,  taking  actual 
part  in  police  work.  Only  on  the  frontier  is  a 
citizen  likely  to  be  called  upon  to  become  part  of 
the  sheriff's  posse.  The  policing  of  a  populous 
and  heterogeneous  community  could  not  be 
efficiently  done  in  that  way.  What  the  citizen 
does  is  to  make  an  economic  contribution  thereto : 
he  pays  his  taxes.  But  that  is  not  all  he  does. 
Social  control  is  directly  exercised  in  a  thousand 
ways,  other  than  through  direct  physical  force, 
even  of  the  police:  by  the  honour  which  in  our 
daily  intercourse  we  accord  to  the  good  man, 
the  repugnance  with  which  we  meet  the  bad, 
the  discomfort  we  create  for  the  challenger  of 
certain  conventions,  the  effort  to  make  it  pleasant 
for  those  who  make  it  pleasant  for  us,  our  dis- 
trust of  the  dishonest,  our  refusal  to  co-operate 
by  employment  of  or  trade  with  the  inefficient 
and  untrustworthy — all  the  multitudinous  proc- 
esses, moral,  social,  economic,  by  which  we  compel 
conformation  to  certain  definite  rules  and  stan- 
dards of  conduct. 

It  is  difficult  to  bring  home  clearly  a  vision  of 
how  an  analogous  process  would  operate  interna- 
tionally, because  mankind  has  never  used  this 
instrument  of  exclusion  in  just  this  way.  Two 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  351 

countries  or  groups  of  countries  go  to  war;  the 
armies  of  one  are  destroyed;  and  a  year  after 
peace  is  made  they  trade  with  one  another  and 
both  with  the  world  at  large  just  as  before. 
Trade  between  France  and  Germany  was  multi- 
plied by  three  in  the  interval  between  the  wars 
of  1870  and  1914.  But,  with  efficient  organ- 
isation, the  most  telling  elements  of  boycott  are 
those  against  which  no  military  force  can  pre- 
vail. Here  is  a  form  of  defence  against  a  common 
enemy  in  which  every  man,  woman,  or  child  of 
every  country  that  feels  itself  threatened  can  co- 
operate. Even  bayonets  cannot  compel  a  world 
to  drink  German  beer,  or  buy  German  goods,  or 
read  German  books,  or  speak  the  German  tongue, 
or  understand  German  philosophers. 

Germany  herself  has,  during  forty  years  in  the 
case  of  Alsace,  and  longer  in  the  case  of  Poland, 
employed  ruthlessly  all  the  means  that  unques- 
tioned power  placed  in  her  hands,  and  tried  to 
Germanise  those  two  provinces;  and,  though  she 
was  dealing  with  peoples  without  means  of  mili- 
tary resistance  and  with  but  rudimentary  organ- 
isation of  the  non-military  means,  her  efforts,  by 
her  own  admission,  have  completely  failed. 

But,  nevertheless,  Poland  has  been  invaded 
and  more  Polish  territory  taken?  Yes,  because 
only  now  is  the  futility  of  these  annexations  be- 
ginning to  appear.  Much  German  opinion,  even 


352  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

in  this  time  of  war,  is  against  annexation  of  non- 
German  territory  and  recognises  its  danger.  But 
the  point  is  that  these  annexations  have  hereto- 
fore carried  no  penalty  in  so  far  as  German  ex- 
pansion in  the  rest  of  the  world  is  concerned. 
If,  forty-four  years  since,  the  German  Empire 
had  known  that  as  the  price  of  the  annexation 
of  Alsace-Lorraine,  it  would  face  a  costly  ex- 
clusion from  the  markets  of  Europe  and  America, 
would  not  the  counsellors  who  opposed  that 
annexation  have  been  very  greatly  strengthened; 
and  would  it  have  occurred? 

It  is  the  elusiveness  of  non-military  resist- 
ance which  would  give  it  its  strength  in  the 
modern  world.  Even  if  one  could  imagine  a 
Germany  breaking  down  a  world's  embargo  in 
some  way — forcing  the  entrance  of  her  ships  into 
foreign  harbours — that  would  not  give  customers 
to  German  trade  if  the  resisting  country  had 
determined  not  to  buy  German  goods.  Every 
housewife  boycotting  German  hardware  and 
every  child  German  toys  would  be  a  soldier  in  the 
defence  of  his  or  her  country;  and  if  all  German 
power  and  efficiency  have  not  sufficed  to  break 
down  the  resistance  to  Germanisation  of  a  rela- 
tively small  number  of  Polish  peasants,  how 
could  it  accomplish  the  immensely  more  difficult 
task  of  overcoming  the  American  woman  and  the 
American  child  ? 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  353 

It  is  not  generally  realised,  perhaps,  how  the 
outstanding  features  of  our  industrial  civilisa- 
tion give  into  the  hands  of  a  determined  popula- 
tion means  of  non-military  resistance  not  pos- 
sessed in  former  times.  Instantaneous  intercom- 
munication over  wide  areas  would  render  a  unity 
of  action  of  this  kind  possible,  which  was  not 
possible  even  a  century  since.  The  permanent 
need  of  intercommunication  between  nations  is 
greater  than  it  was;  the  interdependence  is  far 
more  vital.  In  the  old  days  a  nation  could  live 
within  itself  in  some  degree.  In  our  day  it  cannot. 

Perhaps  the  one  nation  that  could  come  nearest 
to  it  would  be  our  own.  The  United  States  is 
indeed  the  one  country  of  the  world  against  which 
it  would  be  most  difficult  to  employ  effectively 
the  method  of  boycott.  That  fact  is,  of  course, 
a  considerable  disadvantage  and  tells  somewhat 
against  the  value  of  the  method.  On  the  other 
hand,  however,  the  vastness  of  the  resources  and 
the  weight  of  the  economic  forces  that  give  us 
this  immunity  also  give  us  a  strong  position  for 
initiating  this  plan,  for  organising  it  and  render- 
ing it  effective. 

Indeed,  so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  judge,  there 
is  no  great  scepticism  on  the  part  of  American 
business  men  as  to  the  practicability  of  the  plan 
under  discussion.  In  the  Convention  of  the 


354  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  United  States  held 
last  February  in  Washington,  Mr.  Herbert  S. 
Houston  presented  a  resolution  urging  that  "the 
economic  pressure  of  the  world's  commerce  was 
the  most  effective  possible  safeguard  of  the 
world's  peace  and  that  its  application  should  be 
provided  for  as  a  penalty  in  future  Hague  Con- 
ventions." In  supporting  his  resolution,  Mr. 
Houston  said: 

Hague  Conferences  have  sought  earnestly  for  penal- 
ties that  would  save  their  conventions  from  being  treated 
as  mere  "bits  of  paper."  Penalties  that  every  nation 
would  be  bound  to  respect  could  be  enforced  through 
economic  pressure.  The  loss  in  trade  would  be  small 
or  great  in  proportion  to  the  amount  and  duration  of 
the  pressure ;  but  it  would  be  at  most  only  an  infinitesimal 
fraction  of  the  loss  caused  by  war. 

This  pressure  would  not  require  an  international  police 
force  to  make  it  effective.  Each  nation  signatory  to  a 
Hague  Convention  that  some  nation  had  broken  could 
apply  it  against  that  nation.  Of  course,  the  fact  of 
infraction  would  have  to  be  established,  but  that  would 
be  equally  necessary  if  an  international  police  force  were 
to  be  used.  The  point  urged  is  that  economic  pressure 
is  a  powerful  and  peaceful  way  to  insure  peace,  while 
an  international  police  force  is  likely  to  be  a  warlike 
way  to  provoke  war.  Probably  such  a  force  could  be 
employed  as  a  constabulary  for  the  Hague  Conference, 
under  well  defined  limitations,  but  its  use  would  be 
beset  with  endless  difficulties  and  enormous  and  per- 
petual expense.  Economic  pressure,  on  the  other  hand, 
could  be  put  in  operation  from  within  by  each  nation 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  355 

without  expense  and  its  power  would  be  as  sure  and 
steady  and  irresistible  as  gravity. 

Mr.  Edward  A.  Filene,  the  well-known  Boston 
merchant,  vice-president  of  the  International 
Congress  of  Chambers  of  Commerce,  is  another 
prominent  business  man  who  has  identified  him- 
self with  the  support  of  the  general  plan  of 
economic  pressure.  Speaking  at  Philadelphia,  at 
the  meeting  which  was  organised  there  under  the 
presidency  of  Mr.  Taft  (June  17,  1915),  Mr. 
Filene  emphasised  many  of  the  considerations 
urged  here.  He  said : 

America  has  it  within  her  power  to  organise  forces 
which  are  greater,  perhaps,  than  battleships  and  armies. 
Please  do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  am  not  suggesting 
that  the  world  can  do  without  arms.  I  do  not  think  we 
can,  any  more  than  we  can  do  without  the  policeman. 
But,  just  as  within  the  State  there  are  many  things  we 
use  besides  the  policeman,  and  before  we  use  the  police- 
man, for  the  enforcement  of  the  law  or  the  execution  of 
the  judgments  of  the  courts,  so  there  are  forces  that  we 
can  use  before  we  employ  our  armies  and  our  navies. 
These  forces  can  be  summarised  in  the  term  "Economic 
Pressure,"  by  which  I  mean  the  commercial  and  financial 
boycott  of  any  nation  which  goes  to  war  without  sub- 
mitting its  dispute  to  judgment  or  to  inquiry,  and  that 
boycott  could  be  of  a  progressive  severity.  In  the  first, 
and  what  would  probably  be  usually  a  sufficiently  effec- 
tive stage,  the  nations  forming  a  league  for  international 
law  and  order  would  refuse  to  buy  goods  from  or  sell 
goods  to  the  offending  nation.  If  its  offense,  however, 


356  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

were  a  very  grievous  one,  and  continued  despite  the  first 
measures,  so  that  greater  pressure  were  needed,  the 
nations  of  the  League  would  practically  sever  all  inter- 
course with  it  and  refuse  to  enter  into  financial  or  com- 
mercial transactions,  refuse  to  receive  or  send  its  mail,  or 
to  clear  its  ships.  And  then  only,  finally,  if  such  measures 
were  ineffective,  would  military  force  be  resorted  to.  But 
my  plea  is  that,  in  the  first  instance,  economic  force  is 
clearly  indicated  and  that  military  force  should  be  resorted 
to  only  if  economic  pressure  should  prove  ineffective.  It 
is  the  deterrent  effect  of  organised  nonintercourse  which 
would  make  war  less  likely,  since  it  would  be  a  terrible 
penalty  to  incur,  and  one  more  difficult,  in  a  sense,  to 
fight  against  than  military  measures.  Furthermore,  its 
systematic  organisation  would  tend  to  make  any  subse- 
quent military  action  by  the  League  more  effective. 
Many  States  that,  for  various  reasons,  might  not  be  able 
to  co-operate  with  military  force,  can  co-operate  with 
their  economic  force,  and  so  render  the  action  against 
the  offending  State  more  effective,  and  that,  in  the  end, 
would  be  more  humane." 

Mr.  Filene's  support  is  suggestive  owing  to 
the  fact  that  he  has  in  the  past  carried  through 
very  important  measures  of  international  com- 
mercial organisation,  notably  in  connection  with 
the  International  Chamber  of  Commerce.  It  is 
understood  that  a  very  influential  group  in  the 
United  States  Chamber  of  Commerce  is  now 
at  work  upon  a  report  on  the  subject  and  may 
submit  a  referendum  upon  it  to  the  Chambers  of 
the  country. 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  357 

I  do  not  imagine,  by  the  way,  that  "without 
expense"  Mr.  Houston  intends  to  convey  the  idea 
that  non-intercourse  would  be  costless  to  the 
nations  enforcing  it.  It  would  not.  It  would  be 
costly,  as  is  every  form  of  penalty  to  those  inflict- 
ing as  well  as  to  those  upon  whom  it  is  inflicted. 
But  that  does  not  condemn  it. 


Some  of  the  gravest  dangers  of  the  proposed 
plan  have  not  been  touched  upon  by  its  critics  so 
far  as  I  know:  certainly  not  by  my  critics.  Its 
outstanding  defect  is  that  the  strong  inter- 
national currents  which  division  of  trade  and 
labour,  irrespective  of  frontiers,  have  in  the  last 
few  generations  set  up  would  be  deliberately 
checked.  The  activities  of  men,  which  have  in 
the  recent  past  so  largely  disregarded  frontiers, 
would  be  so  organised  as  to  take  very  considerable 
regard  of  frontiers.  Nations  will  tend  to  become 
under  such  an  arrangement  what  they  have  not 
been  of  late:  economic,  social  and  moral  units. 
There  might  result  between  nations  a  sort  of 
competition  for  self-sufficingness  which,  ill 
directed,  might  conceivably  end  in  buttressing 
that  immoral  nationalism  which  was  one  of  the 
causes  of  the  war. 

But  to  accept  present  evils  because  a  possible 
remedy  may  be  ill-used  is  to  condemn  us  to  help- 


358  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

lessness.  If  a  remedy  presents  itself  it  is  our 
business  to  see  that  it  is  not  ill-used. 

Moreover — and  this  reason  is  the  decisive  one 
— all  the  risk  and  evil  of  distorted  nationalism,  of 
swamping  the  human  conscience  in  the  national 
corporation,  which  like  other  corporations  has  no 
conscience,  is  still  more  inherent  in  the  militarisa- 
tion of  the  nations,  in  military  preparation  and 
efficiency. 

Every  new  proposal  is  subjected  to  a  standard 
of  judgment  which  it  is  never  thought  of  apply- 
ing to  old  methods.  There  are,  of  course,  in 
the  project  under  discussion,  obvious  defects, 
difficulties,  and  dangers.  But  to  justify  its  trial 
or  adoption  it  is  not  necessary  to  controvert  that ; 
all  that  is  necessary  is  to  show  that  those  dis- 
advantages are,  on  the  whole,  less  than  those 
attaching  to  any  possible  alternative  method. 
When,  therefore,  it  is  objected  that  the  proposal 
has  such  and  such  defects,  it  is  necessary  to  ask 
whether  military  force — war  in  the  ordinary 
sense — has  not  those  defects  in  still  greater 
degree. 

The  plan  here  outlined  will  not  work  perfectly ; 
it  will  be  less  imperfect  than  the  present  means — 
just  as  imperfect  as  the  means  we  employ 
within  the  state  for  punishing  crime  or  compel- 
ling observance  of  necessary  rules.  It  will  be 
expensive  of  employment,  just  as  the  maintenance 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  359 

of  law  courts  and  police  and  prisons  is  expensive. 
It  will  hurt  innocent  parties,  just  as  when  we 
send  a  man  to  the  penitentiary  we  punish  his 
wife  and  family  far  more  severely,  probably,  than 
we  do  the  culprit. 

All  I  claim  for  this  extension  of  the  meaning 
of  war  is  that  the  methods  which  the  circum- 
stances of  the  modern  world  have  made  possible 
will  be  much  more  effective  than  merely  military 
coercion,  because  in  the  last  resort  history  proves 
such  coercion  in  certain  contingencies — notably 
such  contingencies  as  those  that  face  America 
now  and  will  face  Christendom  at  the  end  of  the 
war — hardly  to  be  effective  at  all. 

Above  all,  will  the  method  here  suggested 
stand  out  from  purely  military  methods  as  tend- 
ing by  its  use  to  undermine  at  least  some  of  the 
motives — moral  and  material — which  create  the 
danger  of  military  ambition  and  aggression.  The 
older  and  purely  military  method  does  not  so 
undermine  those  motives  and  impulses;  its  em- 
ployment tends  to  develop  them,  to  spread  the 
very  disease  which  it  is  its  object  to  cure.  Mili- 
tary conquest  of  a  military  aggressor  generally 
ends  merely  by  transferring  the  danger  from  one 
area  to  another. 

What  are  the  steps  for  America  to  take? 

The  definite  one  that  has  here  been  suggested 
is  contingent  upon  the  rupture  of  Diplomatic 


360  THE  WORLD'S  HIGHWAY 

relations  with  Germany.  If  that  is  avoided  the 
natural  ground  for  international  action  by  Amer- 
ica at  the  settlement,  or  earlier,  is  in  the  questions 
arising  out  of  sea  law.  In  that,  as  in  certain  other 
regards,  America  stands  at  this  juncture  of  inter- 
national affairs  as  the  natural  and  most  powerful 
exponent  of  neutral  interest.  She  should,  there- 
fore, secure  practical  agreement — not  necessarily 
by  formal  conference — between  herself,  the  South 
American  states,  and  possibly  also  the  neutral 
states  of  Europe,  as  to  the  international  law  for 
which  they  would  all  stand  in  such  matters  as 
the  use  of  the  sea.  On  the  basis  of  this,  America 
might  then  devise  with  them  an  agreement  as 
to  their  economic  relations  with  the  rest  of  the 
world  in  certain  situations:  an  understanding 
covering  not  only  such  things  as  the  furnishing 
of  supplies  to  European  or  Asiatic  combatants  in 
wartime,  but  also  covering  certain  peace  con- 
tingencies as  well. 

Presenting  thus  a  solid  front  to  the  actual  com- 
batants, the  neutrals  could  certainly  secure  a 
place  at  the  settlement  when  it  comes  to  discuss- 
ing those  matters  that  are  now  subjects  of  differ- 
ence between  this  country  and  Germany  and 
Great  Britain. 

Obviously  the  combatants  will  need  the  neutrals 
after  the  war ;  and  if  America  went  into  the  con- 
ference as  the  central  figure  of  a  combination 


NON-MILITARY  COERCION  361 

composed  of  the  neutral  states,  she  could  in  large 
measure  dominate  the  situation,  so  far  as  future 
international  law  is  concerned,  and  place  the 
international  relations  of  the  future  on  a  very 
different  foundation,  by  leading  in  the  organisa- 
tion and  application  of  those  forces  I  have  dealt 
with  here. 

All  this,  of  course,  calls  for  a  little  imaginative- 
ness and  inventiveness;  but  America  has  never 
lacked  those  qualities  in  other  spheres.  Will  she 
show  them  in  this  new  field  that  she  will  shortly 
be  obliged  to  enter — the  field  of  international 
politics?  Or  will  she  be  content  with  the  old 
futilities  of  the  older  world  ? 


DATE  DUE 


PRINTKDINU.S.A. 


JfKMHBRNII 


